British-born designer Peter Copping is a collaborator at heart. Ever since his student days at Central Saint Martins in London, he has always been drawn to group projects and creative dialogues. “For graduation, three of us went to our professors with the idea of having a joint show, which had never really happened before,” says Copping, sitting in the Paris studio of French luxury fashion house Lanvin. Today he serves as its artistic director, tasked with the label’s revival. “We even got sponsorship, which wasn’t spent very wisely. We just went out having fun – things you’re allowed to do when you’re that age.”

After graduation, Copping went on to the Royal College of Art. He then began building one of the most impressive CVs in the fashion industry, working with some of the best designers of his generation. A chance meeting with Christian Lacroix at The Conran Shop in London led to a stint as a couture apprentice at the label in Paris; he later secured his first full-time position at Iceberg in Milan. In the early 1990s he returned to Paris to work for luminaries including Sonia Rykiel and Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton. “I always knew that I wanted to come back to Paris and make it my home,” he says. “Everyone from Jean Paul Gaultier to great Japanese designers such as Yohji Yamamoto was here in this city. I wanted to be right in the middle of it.”

Creative-director roles naturally followed, first at Nina Ricci in 2009 and then at the US-based Oscar de la Renta in 2015. But two years later, Copping was ready to return to Paris and to the couture atelier, working behind the scenes to relaunch Balenciaga’s couture line with the house’s then-creative director, Demna. “It was nice being able to work at a slower pace and really having time to investigate things,” adds the designer, admitting that he is as obsessed with the artisanship of couture as he is with the clients who commission these one-of-a-kind creations. “I would always sneak out from backstage and take pictures.”

Last year, when fashion houses began reshuffling their executive teams and creative-director positions began opening one after the other, Copping’s name unsurprisingly started to circulate in HR departments across Paris. Though he wasn’t “desperate to be an artistic director” or to be back in the spotlight, when he was offered the opportunity to take the creative lead at Lanvin it was too good to refuse. “It’s a beautiful house with a beautiful history,” says Copping of the Parisian brand, founded by Jeanne Lanvin in 1889 as a small hat shop.

Though it’s a leadership role, Copping’s job presents endless opportunities for collaboration. Rather than putting himself at the centre of the story, he is passionate about mentoring – and learning from – the brand’s young design team, who Monocle sees whizzing in and out of the studio. Equally, he has made it his mission to dig deep into the brand’s archive and pay homage to its pioneering founder. “I couldn’t wait to see it,” says Copping. “As soon as I got through the door, I asked, ‘Well, where is it?’ It’s all about going back to the roots of the house so I have been exclusively looking at the Jeanne Lanvin period, which feels very relevant today.”

Unlike in many fashion buildings, there is no sign of excess in his light-filled office on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré – just practical furniture, piles of sketches and books on muses such as US socialite and interior designer Lee Radziwill. Copping has spent months here going through the Lanvin archives, including those at the Palais Galliera. “The museum has a lot of amazing pieces from the 1930s,” he tells Monocle. “I’ve found myself particularly drawn to them because the era’s silhouettes have a certain ease and comfort.”

Visiting Lanvin’s bedroom out of hours at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (where it has been installed since 1965), Copping was also able to step inside the cordoned-off area and better understand her refined taste, as well as her appreciation for fine materials and decorative art. “Seeing that level of sophistication really gave me quite a sharp understanding of who she was and how she lived her life,” says the designer, who shares a similar love for interiors and collecting textiles from his travels.

For his debut autumn/winter 2025 collection, presented this January, he loosely evoked Lanvin’s sophisticated style in the form of column dresses, sumptuous velvet, leather fabrics and subtle sleeve embellishments. He was cautious about translating anything too literally, conscious of the need to avoid veering into costume territory. “I didn’t want to be overly academic about it,” he adds. “I cherry-picked items and tried to make them feel contemporary.”

This ability to tell Lanvin’s story through a modern lens immediately grabbed the industry’s attention and reignited hopes about the revival of the storied house, which is owned by the publicly listed Lanvin Group (formerly Fosun Fashion Group) and for years had struggled to maintain momentum beyond its robust business in trainers. “Lanvin has always been known for evening wear but there’s more that we can offer in day wear and particularly knitwear, which takes me back to my days at Sonia Rykiel,” says Copping, who also presented his first menswear collection as part of his January debut. “There’s an element of precision in men’s tailoring that I really enjoy. Lanvin used to have a huge menswear business so hopefully we’ll get back to that. We just need to let people know that [aside from the trainers] there’s a full fashion collection here again – nice knitwear, good coats, tailoring – so that men will start to return.”

As part of Lanvin’s transformation following the arrival of Siddhartha Shukla, its deputy CEO, in 2021, the company has been rethinking its branding and the artistic director has been playing around with the label’s powder-blue house colour. “Jeanne Lanvin had her own dyeing plant and books filled with different versions of blue, almost like a modern-day Pantone book,” says Copping. “I want to have it in every outfit, even if it’s a small detail inside a garment.”

The brand’s emblem, an illustration of the founder and her daughter, can also be found on Copping’s mood board. “For me, it represents family and a community that extends across different generations,” he says. “Today, family means so much to so many people. And I like the idea that the house reflects a modern family in some ways.” Having made a successful debut, this September the designer is returning to Paris Fashion Week to present his sophomore collection. “We’re sandwiched between Louis Vuitton and Dries van Noten. That will make for a great day of shows and it’s important for us to be among the competition,” he says with a smile.

To prepare for it, he has continued to explore the art deco era through Jeanne Lanvin’s eyes, examining sharp graphics from the 1930s and observing the works of other designers referencing her, including Geoffrey Beene. “When people ask what I plan to do for my next collection, I simply say, ‘We’re going to do the same thing.’ There are so many facets of Lanvin’s work to draw upon, from her personal style to the way that she put things together. She really deserves to be much better known.”
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