It was a bright new dawn on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Drums boomed and trumpets blared to fanfare the ascension of Bruno Sialelli to the Lanvin throne. We were gathered to witness his coronation in the original Gothic 14th-century townhouse once inhabited by the abbots of Cluny, now home to France’s National Museum of the Middle Ages.
Which made you think: While no new designer should be judged by the backstory of the house that’s hired him or her, this was an environment conducive to the contemplation of the past. Lanvin’s ancient history is as beautiful as its recent history is ugly: Since 2015, its womenswear timeline has been bloodier than Game of Thrones. To make way for Sialelli, Lanvin’s kingmakers most recently jettisoned their only functioning creative limb, menswear designer Lucas Ossendrijver, in a manner utterly unbecoming of the codes of honor, courtliness, and gentilesse that were so fetishized when this venue was built.
That, however, is not Sialelli’s fault. His debut was a collection that was eager to please: a huge all-you-can-eat buffet of ideas. These included woolen jackets with sailor collars and leather ties; pea jackets with quilt-piped, heart-shaped lapels; double-hemmed kilts in mismatched checks; tricksy, check blanket ponchos; and foulard smocks for him and her in a manuscript-style St. George and the Dragon print that also popped up on pochettes and as an embroidery on a backless, rope-choker-neck dress.
The venerable Jeanne and Marguerite Lanvin logo was used as a print on a skirt and pants. There was a seemingly new, all-90-degree JL logo that featured on both the carpet and the garments (and the sneakers between) as a monogram or standalone signature. There was mid-calf, wide-cut carpenter’s denim (and moleskin) worn with longer, silk Lanvin-logo pajamas beneath; fringed sneakers; suiting bisected by cinching panels of knit at the abdomen; scallop-hemmed, patched leather jackets; a suit-and-clog combination for men; blanket overcoats and skirts; and a fine silvery Lurex button-up dress undone by a skirt of sleeves for phantom arms.
The collection also included both-gender twinsets, minidresses, and shirts featuring Babar and Zephir (another beautiful French institution with a questionable narrative), a series of layered slip dresses with patched extra hems at the back that sometimes came embroidered with foxes, a very fine purple bobbled dress (vaguely caftan-y in mien) and, we’re nearly there, a final segue through some vaguely ’70s-looking illustrations and print on the closing pieces.
And, exhale. So, while Sialelli most certainly served a diverse spread, excellently executed, much of it felt marinated in the aesthetic of another place—his previous employer, Loewe. This is understandable in this first instance. The from-every-angle blitzkrieg of variety in the collection can be seen either as the fruits of a boundlessly fertile mind or as a bloatedness borne of lack of focus compounded by a lack of confidence in any of the many subsections in this collection. Whether it is inventiveness or insecurity, all should become clearer in future collections (Lanvin’s bracingly Red Wedding approach to human resources depending). What this collection did illuminate is that Lanvin’s newly crowned prince has the potential to transition the house from its dark age to a new phase of relative expressive enlightenment. But the only one who can write that manuscript is Sialelli himself.
