Sept. 30, 2025

Lanvin’s
Robe Redux

WORDS ANDERS CHRISTIAN MADSEN

LANVIN

Anders Christian Madsen reviews the Lanvin Spring/Summer 2026 collection by Peter Copping.

Peter Copping illuminated the Pavillon Gabriel in deep blue light ahead of his second Lanvin show on Tuesday afternoon. A nod to the “Lanvin blue” mixed by Jeanne Lanvin in the interwar period and inspired by Renaissance blues, the color had led him down a path of associations that counted everything from Picasso and Yves Klein to Maria Callas, whose voice filled the room during the finale. “Blue is a color that resonates with people. I wanted to form a blue backdrop so everything would be shown against this color,” he said.

By proxy of its cool cleanness, blue is often the color attached to ideas of modernity: technology, architecture, workwear. That fact set the tone for a collection largely founded in the modernization of the codes of Jeanne Lanvin. But while this season has had an insatiable appetite for courtly dressing, the perky pannier-like skirts that characterize the founder’s robe de style are a hard sell in 2026. To modernize it, Copping tore it apart and put it back together in new ways, recontextualizing its shape, the layers of its skirt, and the bows and finery that traditionally adorned it.

LANVIN

“The change and the modernism come through fabrics. We developed a lot of modern fabrics. By looking at what is available for me to work today just takes it forward,” he explained. It was evident not only in his robe de style experiments, but in coats draped like dresses, techy silk blouses that almost looked like anoraks, and skirt suits cut open at the back and held together with sturdy grosgrain bands. Often, there was an outdoorsy, performance-like feel to Copping’s modernizations. A robe de style was evoked in crinkled parachute fabric.

“When the pieces come in from the archive and they’re packed in these amazing boxes, the quality to them is so beautiful because they are aged. I wanted to re-find that quality in the pieces today, so a lot are intentionally washed and crumbled,” the designer said. Adding that wear and soul to the Lanvin look was the most attractive part of the collection, and something that makes sense for the reboot Copping’s new tenure at the house represents. Because of its elegance and opulence, in a modern-day context Lanvin needs to feel lived-in; owned; cool.