Why no photo of Bruno Sialelli at the end of this set? Because by the time he got to the pit, he was lost in an audience that was on its feet and hustling for the door. You had to feel for him, although ultimately this show—and to a degree, the collection in it—was undone by an excess of ill-considered variables that needn’t have been.
Obviously, it’s unfortunate to hold a show outside when it’s raining. To oblige the audience to both hold umbrellas and listen to the Lord of the Flies–quoting soundtrack on headphones is fiddly, distracting, and immersive only in that several showgoers rushed home immediately afterward to change their drenched clothes. But anyway...
The collection had three high-watermark moments: These were the round-shouldered full-armed suits for women, the distorted marinière-stripe knits for men and women, and the downpour of sectioned, pleated, and drapey sashed double-fabric dresses near the end. Around these finely expressed strong ideas floated way too much flotsam and jetsam—much of which appeared to have found its way to Lanvin from another shore.
The menswear shirting pieces were baggy and disheveled and delicate and attractive, but they looked mightily like Loewe. Sailor collars? Come on. Sialelli is clearly clever, but he seems stubbornly stuck in the aesthetic of his work for the house upon the basis of which he got a job at this one. The thing is, this house is not that house: He needs to make this one different and distinct by designing it so. Print-wise, Sialelli moved on from Babar the Elephant this season to Little Nemo in Slumberland, a comic strip by the awesomely named Zenas Winsor McCay about a little boy’s wondrous dreams. The last panel always saw Nemo awake, sometimes befuddled and not quite sure where he’d been, sometimes half-remembering, and sometimes still engrossed in the place he’d just come from. Lanvin is better now than under all its other post-Elbaz designers, but unless Sialelli wakes up from his past to define his present anew, it is never going to excite anything much—except for recognition that it looks a lot like Loewe.
