PETER COPPING | LANVIN

Interview Filep Motwary

Filep Motwary: Peter, if we go further back, back to when everything started for you, how did it all begin? What were the first influences that enabled this need to discover more about fashion? What was your childhood like and the first steps that shaped this path?

Peter Copping | Lanvin: I was a curious child. I liked doing lots of different things. I grew up in the countryside, we had a country upbringing with lots of animals and horses and dogs and things like that, which I love. To show me a dog in the street. I can tell you what breed it is and all the information about them. I used to get quite obsessed with a lot of things and really go deeply into it. It was quite a creative household as well. My mother was either always making things or painting. She didn’t work, so she had time to do that. She was looking after my sister and me. And then I had an older sister. So it’s the old cliché. I probably played more with her Barbie doll than she did. Then I got into making clothes for the Barbie doll. We also lived in a very old house, and in part of it, our family lived, and in the other half was my grandmother. And she was quite a chic lady.
I’m not saying she was wearing Chanel suits or anything like that, but she was very smart. She had her little Windsmoor suits, really nice shoes, always kept in a beautiful way. She’d have a little mink stall that she’d put on. So just being surrounded by some of those people, I think, just started opening up my eyes to women and how they dress and thinking about clothes. My father was working in the Royal Air Force, and he wasn’t always at home. So he was sometimes posted abroad or traveling on different missions. I did really grow up in a household of women.

FM: But it’s a daring decision for a ‘country boy’, let’s say, to choose fashion to study it and so on. Was there a moment that you loathed your background?

PC: No, absolutely not. I’ve always really felt very privileged to grow up with my family and where I grew up. And although we say it was in the country, it was, in fact, just like five kilometers outside of Oxford. So Oxford is a great city in proximity to London as well. But there was a lot happening there. There was a Museum of Modern Art. There was the Ashmolean Museum, the Pitt Rivers. So all of those things, I used to go to them all the time and just lose myself in. Again, going back to the curiosity I always had and just wanting to see things and know more about them.

FM: What was your perception of fashion before you got involved in it?

PC: There was definitely a moment when I had to admit this is what I want to do. And there’s never any pressure from my parents to say, go into a more academic path. A lot of my friends, their parents were pushing them into medicine or law or engineering, but that never was what my parents did. As soon as both my sister and I displayed that we wanted to follow a creative path, they were fully behind us. And I think in some ways they’d have been disappointed if we had come round and said, I want to be a lawyer. They definitely wanted us to go into a creative field. My father was in the Royal Air Force, but he had wanted to go to Art College. He wanted to become a painter, but his parents wouldn’t let him. So I think that’s really why when my sister and I were showing this interest in the arts, they were really very happy.

FM: What does your sister do today? Can you keep on mentioning her?

PC: She studied furniture design, and she worked in furniture design for a little bit after graduating, and then she just took on different roles. She’s a Virgo, so she’s someone that’s incredibly well-organized. At one point, she became a PA to this eccentric English guy, and now she’s working at Oxford University in the Alumni Department.

FM: You stepped in the house of Lanvin at the moment of both promise and pressure. When the opportunity came, what were your first thoughts? Was that an immediate yes?

PC: It was an immediate YES! Lanvin is a house that I knew well, in some ways from its recent past, but also the historical context in which it is also set. And that comes from just having studied fashion at college, doing research, wanting to know about all these different houses and what they’d stood for in the past. Saying that, I never thought I would be heading up Lanvin. So that was quite incredible. I didn’t hesitate at all. And it was quite funny because obviously I’d been working in New York for Oscar De La Renta. I stepped away from that position and decided to come back to Europe and took some time off, and then just really wasn’t working in fashion. I did get the opportunity to go and work with Demna on the haute couture collection for Balenciaga, but very much in the background, not as a design position at all. Just orchestrating it in some ways for him. So it was a little bit off the radar. So when I actually got the first call, it came via a headhunter and as you know, they’ll never say what the job is for. It was more like, “we’ve got this job which we think you could be great for” (laughs).
And I was waiting, thinking, “what house are they going to say it’s for? So then they said Lanvin, it was like, oh, wow, I’m really interested in that because, thinking back, I was very happy Nina Ricci, and I saw parallels between that: the same size of House, not part of a group, had both been founded by women. Definitely part of their DNA was a certain femininity, a Frenchness as well. And then I knew that partly this role would lead me to do menswear, and that’s something I’d never done before.

FM: Actually, yes. Now that I think of it, this is your first menswear attempt.

PC: It was exciting to have another challenge at this stage in my career.

FM: I actually love the menswear collection.

PC: I’m happy to hear that, as I really enjoy doing it. And I think probably the menswear in that period where there was no real creative director at the house has lost its way a little bit. I feel really confident about what we’re starting to do with it and think that as people look more to the Lanvin and see what we do. I am hoping to draw back in a good clientele for the menswear, while it’s a good moment to reestablish the brand in a way that is current. Even in that short period when I was under the radar or not really working, I think fashion has evolved and changed so much, and for me, in a pretty good way. Now the codes of menswear have broken down a lot. So as a women’s wear designer, designing men, I feel a lot more capable of doing it now. Maybe 10 years ago, I’d have said, no, I don’t feel so comfortable doing that. It’s not really for me.

FM: What was that good for you when you took over? What was the… Let’s say, of course, they have expectations from you, and I’m sure they put them on the table. But also from your side, what do you think of as a necessity? What was missing, actually?

PC: I think the team did a perfect job of keeping things going, even without a real leader. He was very happy to come in and work with them because they’d put an incredible amount of effort in the absence of someone guiding them. When I came into the house, I found a real sense of loyalty as well—people who had a genuine fondness for it and really believed in it as a place to work and for what it had stood for in the past.
There were some incredibly talented people on the team, and what’s been nice is that they’ve really supported me in my work. They understood quite quickly what I wanted and what I was looking for, and we’ve been able to move forward together. I don’t really like the idea of a new artistic director coming in and everyone else leaving. I think you have to give people a chance to show what they’re capable of.
Most of them knew Lanvin better than I did—they had been working there before me. They understood the operational side, they knew their client base, and they already knew what worked. From there, we could build and expand together. They were just a very nice group of people, and I think I got along with them well because we work closely together every day. It’s important for it to be a pleasant experience for all of us and to create a good, healthy working environment.

FM: Obviously, Lanvin carries its own DNA. However, which elements do you want to keep, and which are the elements you want to change?

PC: That’s a tricky one. I don’t think there’s necessarily anything I’d want to change or completely rule out. Probably some things may fade a little into the background, but they’ll always be present in some way—it’s more a case of highlighting other things. I want to create clothes that people can actually wear, and you achieve that by building a wardrobe.
I’m thinking of real staple pieces that should always be there: the trench coat, the little black dress for women, denim, even a caban. Pieces that can always be worked in different ways and given new creative energy each season. I do tend toward a very sophisticated approach to clothing, and I’m quite conscious of that. To an extent, that spirit feels quite right for Lanvin.
I have to push myself to create a wonderful, solid wardrobe for women that works for daytime, and the same for men as well. For menswear, it’s easier to keep it focused on daywear and then introduce a few evening pieces. With women’s collections, I like designing all aspects, and while I know I can lean toward sophistication, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What matters is thinking about how a piece can be worn and giving women options.
There’s a lack of sophistication, true aesthetics, and a real sense of history, knowledge, and passion right now. Through my work, I observe so many collections, and I sometimes ask myself: if I were a woman, would I wear this? It’s not always an easy question to answer, because there are many things that are poorly designed and won’t be relevant in a year or two.

FM: Yeah, I agree with you that most of it becomes dated very quickly.

PC: And it’s funny because coming back to Lanvin and being in the forefront, I met women who were clients of mine. I was with Nina Ricci. A lot of them mentioned that they still wear some of the pieces they bought back in the day and that people still compliment them when wearing those clothes. That’s a thing that really gives me a big sense of pride.

FM: Its true that people know you as a designer who loves women. I think that’s a very big compliment.

PC: Yeah. Especially at a time when men designers are always accused of taking women in the wrong direction.

FM: This can definitely not be said about you. So you fell into Lanvin by parachute landing fall, right? I’m wondering if there were any fears, any curiosities or discoveries that shaped your early direction.

PC: Surprisingly enough, I didn’t have any fears. I arrived in September, and the first collection was presented in January, so there wasn’t much time to put it together. Everything was new to me—a new team as well—and we all had to get to know one another. On second thought, I suppose that might have been a fear: not knowing who I would be working with.
Soon the anxiety evaporated, and as we started the fittings and the working process, everything began to move in a good direction, and I felt confident about the team. I remember some of the first fittings where I had given a brief to the designers, and they came back with maquettes they’d made, having studied volumes. We put them on in the fitting room, had the model walk, and I remember thinking, wow, these are really good. They were really capturing the spirit I wanted to achieve. That gave me even more confidence and helped me get off to a strong start.

FM: Your debut last season was a homecoming, a moment of reflection and re-establishment for Lanvin. However, this second collection, if I may say, feels more outward-facing?

PC: Yeah, I’d say so. I think the first collection had a very subtle color palette, but for this one, everything was set off against this bright blue. I loved the idea of seeing color against such a vibrant backdrop. Even when I started looking at some of the photos from the fashion show, I loved seeing the clothes again… well, the blue of the carpet and the blue of the wall. It makes the collection feel bolder in some ways—it sends a stronger, more confident message. Sometimes a bright red would play against the blue, which really stands out.
For me, blue is the color of Lanvin, which is why I chose it and wanted to design the set that way. But so much of this collection is still based on the archive. By introducing different color options, I think it helps distance it from looking too historical or too close to what it was before. I also wanted to inject a little more sensuality. I don’t really like the word sexy, but I don’t think Jeanne Lanvin’s women were like that in those days.
It’s nice to look at some of those historical ’20s pieces and try and tweak that so that a woman will feel a little more seductive in it.

FM: You describe the season as a second act. Do you view fashion in theatrical terms in any way?

PC: More like a circus. It’s changed in some ways from when I started in fashion, because now it really does feel like you are performing. Putting on a fashion show has an element of theater to it. I’m thinking, for example, of the red dresses played against the blue—considering the visual impact and the image that will be created once the show is over. Those images last forever, and for me, that’s a bit like thinking theatrically, almost like a mise en scène.
Although that theatrical element is at the heart of what I do, at the end of the day it’s about the clothes. But the way you present a collection definitely introduces a slightly theatrical dimension.

FM: Two seasons later, what is the most challenging aspect of this collaboration? What would you say?

PC: We’re a small house and being in a smaller structure there’s maybe less money floating around sometimes. So it’s a big challenge to make our voice heard when there are so many other brands out there, like powerhouses, that can grab all the attention. It feels a bit like David and Goliath next to these huge mega brands that have every celebrity they want. They can put huge fashion shows on in the center of Paris and build the most amazing set for it, which obviously we can’t do any of that. But I think the intimacy that we have and that we’re so opposed to that does bring a certain appeal to people and that we just feel a little bit more…this is a definite appeal.

Whether you succeed or fail, I don’t think that people came to your show out of curiosity, they came to the show because Lanvin stands for something big, which you respect.

FM: And you have proved yourself on more than one occasion throughout the years. So this is a very good moment for you.

PC: Thank you. I’ve seen a couple of people write that, and it really makes me happy when they say it seems right for Lanvin. I wanted to carve out a slightly different place for the house. I was, of course, a huge fan of Alber Elbaz—he’s the person who really put the house on the map in recent history. As much as I admired him, I didn’t want there to be too much of a parallel between what I do and what he did.
Sometimes, I didn’t see Lanvin in his collections—I saw more of Alber, who happened to be at Lanvin. That’s not a criticism, because he was making truly beautiful clothes. Perhaps what I’m saying isn’t quite right, because they were right for the house, yet the essence of Jeanne Lanvin wasn’t necessarily fully present. I don’t know if that’s entirely correct, but it was amazing what he accomplished—I think that’s undeniable.

FM: I’m wondering, what’s the biggest risk when you design a collection? And how free are you? I said, as a designer?
Are you also very confident with your own taste because this can happen as well?

PC: I think I’ve been fortunate to work in places where my own taste is aligned with the house as I’m designing for. That’s probably what gives an element of authenticity because it doesn’t look like I’m forced to do this. I haven’t ever really thought, I’ve got to make Lanvin really cool, but rather I’ve got to make it really beautiful and relevant again. But it’s not like I’m trying to make it the coolest thing on earth. I don’t really have a conflict with my own taste in designing here. It’s a nice position to be in.

FM: What about critique? Are you ever… Are you curious to read how your work is received? Does it matter to you at the end?

PC: I’d probably be lying if I said it didn’t matter, because everybody wants to read something good. Some journalists, the ones who really write well, observe things, look at what’s presented, and form their own judgments and opinions. But sometimes they don’t know the whole picture. They don’t know why a decision was made.
Sometimes a designer or a brand has to make a choice that’s out of their control. For example, maybe a long dress gets burned with the iron, so we turn it into a mini dress. Then people might say the mini dress looks vulgar, when in fact I had wanted it to be a long dress. Fortunately, that’s never happened (laughs), but it illustrates the point: they don’t always see the full context or the challenges we face from all directions, which can impact what we’re able to do.

FM: You mentioned that this collection plays with exposing the internal linings and how to wear gross crane escapes, and construction is revealed as decoration. What inspired this elevation of process, and is it a homage to the craft of couture? I overheard before you say you had people, you were showing them the mood board. You were explaining the prints and how they became broader and vice versa, which I thought was very interesting.

PC: Well, I really enjoy the craft of couture, but I’m a terrible sewer (laughs). I was never any good at college, but that doesn’t stop me from having a huge appreciation for it—and for all the people who can do it, the amazing artisans we have in the atelier. It’s incredible what they can do with their hands.
I very much enjoy the craft of making clothes and what it can mean—the details. And a lot of the details are on the inside. I like to give just as much attention to the inside as the outside. That’s something I’ve always done and enjoyed. Part of that comes from my time working with Sonia Rykiel. We’d be at a fitting, and she’d just say, “Take that sweater, turn it inside out!” And at first I’d think, what is she talking about? That’s ridiculous—it looks worse! But maybe it did look better: the seams had more interest, the stitch of the knit took on another dimension. That was something I really learned from her—to not just tape things in a fitting.
Then there was a cream satin coat for women. It came back from the atelier, and it was so perfect. And that’s something I don’t always like—something that’s too perfect can lose character. So with the fabric, we experimented with how it could get slightly wrinkled. We knew we couldn’t fully wash it because we’d already done a trial and it would change the fabric, so we gently squeezed it, almost massaging the coat. The collar stayed pristine, but the body had a slight wrinkle.
It was definitely a thoughtful process—it wasn’t just throwing it in the washing machine and destroying it. That level of controlled imperfection plays off against something more perfect, and that’s what I really enjoy: the process of trying things, seeing what works, and finding the right formula. And I think that’s the fun part of designing.

FM: In a moment where fashion often leads towards such reality, how do you make softness feel radical and even subversive?

PC: That’s a good question, because softness and lightness are definitely things that appeal to me. I think, in general, women want to wear something that feels light and airy—even a heavy coat still has to feel light when you put it on, if you know what I mean. That’s something I try to achieve in the design process.
For example, take this dress behind me (he points to a long high blue jersey dress). It was draped in silk jersey, with two different qualities of jersey: a slightly heavier one for the base, and a lighter, more transparent one for the draped sections. I decided to cut the sleeve open and close it with poppers, so there’s some hardware to counterbalance all the softness and fluidity of the fabric. It’s really about playing with textures and materials together. I thought it was important to introduce that metal element on the dress.
There’s a second dress in the same spirit, which also has a metal element—a quite large buckle that draws in a draped belt. It’s that balance of softness and structure that I love exploring.

FM: Speaking about artisanship, Lanvin is deeply rooted in this dimension. Over the years, different designers interpreted the legacy in very different ways. Montana definitely gave it another dimension. Elbaz took it further to something softer than Montana, still very glamorous, though. What is your own understanding of Lanvin? Not the label Lanvin, but the idea of it?

PC: Lanvin, for me, is extremely French. I always knew it was a house very much about decoration. If I think of Jeanne Lanvin’s work, it was about simple shapes, highly decorated, and crafted in rich fabrics—it definitely had a sense of richness. But at the same time, a lot of it was quite simple. The silhouettes could be pared back, elegant in their restraint.
I also knew about its history with perfumes. Lanvin was defined by some very successful fragrances in the past. But there were things I didn’t know as well before I really came into the house and started speaking with our archivist. For example, Jeanne Lanvin had a sports line, and she was one of the first designers—if not the first—to start menswear. She was a true powerhouse, incredibly driven. She even had her own dyeing plant and in-house ateliers for embroidery. That’s why we have such an excellent archive of embroidery designs—it’s quite exceptional, because she preserved everything.

FM: I wanted to ask, is the archive big?

PC: The archive is big, yes, and it is situated outside of Paris, about two hours away. I actually haven’t been to the archive yet, as we are not allowed to go out there and rummage through the drawers and take what you want. You have to give very specific pieces and send them a request. So basically, everything that we request can be brought into Paris.

FM: Speaking of archives, one of the standard pieces this season, for me, was the silver satin dress that is echoing a very iconic Jean Lanvin silhouette. In your view, how do you see this, what makes a garment resonate across decades? What gives it lasting power?

PC: It’s a dress I’ve seen appear in a number of other collections this season. I don’t know if you saw the Simone Rocha collection—it seemed very inspired, in some ways, by Madame Lanvin. Even in the Dior collection, they had a similar structured skirt. I guess it’s a strong silhouette.
Looking at the Lanvin pieces in the archive, like the ones I tried to create, it has a sense of drama and presence without being over the top. It’s cut off above the ankle, which I love—you get the essence of a long dress, but that little bit shorter makes it feel cooler than a gown.
In designing the dress, I tried to make it look like it was falling from the body. It isn’t fully fitted through the torso. The sleeves drop, held by grosgrain ribbon, and the back is quite open. I definitely wanted a lack of structure. We experimented with a couple of different fabrics before finding the right combination. The first fabric didn’t look right, so we cut it again and tried taffeta, wanting it to have a slightly broken-in feel, similar to the dressing gown we had done earlier. It came back for another fitting, and at first, I thought it might be too washed. But looking at it more and more, it felt right.
At that stage, I decided to add a different fabric for the hem. It was important that it wasn’t a color match—I liked the two tones of gray together. Some of that came together partly planned and partly by chance, which I think is a nice part of the design process—you don’t always know where it will take you.
If I may add, I think I’m quite good at looking at something and analyzing it. Not everything comes perfect from the atelier, but I can assess a piece and think, what’s wrong here? How can I change or improve it? That also ties back to reading reviewers’ comments. Sometimes there are changes I’d like to make, but logistically or time-wise, you can’t—like you can’t recut a dress the night before. No one knows that, so you go with the best version you have at the time. At some point, you just have to let things go.

FM: Peter, this ability to wring a dress, to re-evaluate, to bring it to its right nature. Is it a talent or is it something that comes with experience or a little bit of both?

PC: I’d say it’s a little bit of both. I don’t think everyone necessarily has that perception, but you can probably learn it over time through experience—by having looked at so many dresses, coats, or whatever. I find that now I can do it relatively quickly, but sometimes a piece needs to “sleep on it” overnight. The next day, I’ll come in and say to the team, let’s look at that again, because I’ve worked out what we need to do to make it feel more balanced or work better.
There was one dress that didn’t make it into the collection this time. It was basically because we were missing a few fittings and completely ran out of time. I know it could have been a beautiful dress—it was the sister dress to the gray one. It was only the day before the show that I saw it for the second time, and there were adjustments that would have taken too long to get done properly. I didn’t want to put the atelier through the stress of it all, only to end up with something that wasn’t exactly how I envisioned it.
So I decided to save it for next season, giving us more time to revisit it and turn it into something special.

FM: Lanvin is a luxury house. However, you’ve worked across many different brands over the years, so I’m wondering how your definition of luxury has evolved. What do you ultimately consider luxury?

PC: Luxury has evolved a lot over the years and is understood in different ways now. For me, though, it’s very much linked to time and craft—attention to detail and the quality of the fabric. Those are probably the main ingredients that define luxury for me.

FM: As someone with British roots and a deep connection to French couture, do you feel a cultural tension in your work, or has that hybridity become a creative advantage?

Peter Copping: Possibly it has, in a way, because I’ve probably lived in France longer than I lived in the UK. But I still feel 100 percent British. People sometimes say to me, “Oh, but you’re French now,” and it’s like—yes, I fully embrace France. I love my life here, and I love being able to live and work here, but I’m still English at heart.
I think we do see things differently from French people, and approaching design from a slightly different perspective brings another dimension. I’m not saying it’s better or worse, but it definitely adds something to the equation.

FM: How would you describe the period we’re in right now in terms of aesthetics and theory?

PC: I don’t really know. I find that aesthetics today are often judged by what one sees through a phone. When I go to an exhibition or a museum and see people not actually looking at what’s in front of them, but only viewing it through their phones, I find that difficult to comprehend.

FM: I think the phone has become a way to confirm your experiences to others.

PC: Yes, that’s true. It’s funny how many people can’t even have a conversation without their phone—they need it to generate one. We were just speaking and showing something on a screen to start a conversation. People have become very dependent on it.
That said, curiosity is something that’s always driven me. I’ve always wanted to look closely at things and examine them—especially in museums. But I’m not living in a bubble. Even with the fashion show, for example, I thought about how the blue background and the clothes would look on people’s phones as they scroll. When that blue image pops up with a red dress, it’s visually impactful—it makes people stop.

FM: What has this business taught you in serving this art?

PC: I feel very lucky to be working in this industry. It’s challenging, with its pros and cons, but it’s an honor nonetheless. And to be doing it within Lanvin, here in Paris, is a real pleasure. I feel very honored to be here and to have been given this opportunity.

FM: My last question: what’s the most important quality a designer should have for longevity?

PC: I think it’s not being frightened of change. That’s something you have to embrace, because what I’m doing now isn’t the same as what I was doing ten years ago—the job itself has changed. And I also think humility is very important. In this industry, you need to keep your feet on the ground, because there’s a lot you don’t know.