Lanvin finally has a new artistic director over a year after Bruno Sialelli left the company in April of last year. On Thursday, the French luxury house announced the appointment of Peter Copping, formerly of luxury brands like Balenciaga and Oscar de la Renta.
It was an unusually lengthy transition process for a luxury brand. It took Gucci only two months to replace the departing Alessandro Michele with Sabato De Sarno, for example. The lack of strong creative leadership has led to a flat period for Lanvin and its parent company Lanvin Group. As of last summer, the brand’s sales were down 10%, and by the beginning of this year, the entire group’s revenue had grown only 1% from quarter to quarter.
Lanvin attempted to fill the void following Sialelli’s departure with a series of rotating creatives as part of a project it called Lanvin Lab. The first was a partnership with the rapper Future released last summer which had a follow-up collection that launched earlier this spring. A second collaboration, with conceptual artist Erwin Wurm, led to the creation of a 50-foot walking handbag statue that toured key Lanvin markets around the world. Neither project made an impression on investors, and Lanvin Group’s share price has fallen 25% since February. The last year has seen a number of executive shakeups through the group. Eric Chen and Huang Zhen replaced Joanna Cheng as CEO and chairman, respectively. And Wolford CEO Silvia Azzali was just replaced with Regis Rimbert this month.
In April, Lanvin CEO Siddhartha Shukla said on the group’s earnings call that a new artistic director for Lanvin would bring some much-needed stability to the company.
“After several years of relative instability. concrete actions have been executed systematically from the inside of the organization out in establishing, first, a clear brand vision and business strategy,” he said. “The final step in our holistic reorganization will come with the imminent appointment in the second quarter of 2024 of a new artistic director for the collections.”
And strong creative leadership has worked elsewhere at the company to turn things around. Lanvin’s sister brand Wolford saw its wholesale revenue increase by 11% last quarter. In April, Wolford’s former CEO Silvia Azzali attributed this growth directly to the leadership of Nao Takekoshi, the newly appointed artistic director of Wolford who joined the brand in February of 2023.
So what can we expect to see from Copping in his new role? Lanvin Group leadership is eager to paint Copping’s appointment as a chance for the brand to turn over a new leaf.
“I am certain that Peter’s outstanding talent and capacity to reinterpret the codes of the Maison with curiosity and innovation make him the ideal candidate to drive success for Lanvin,” Lanvin Group CEO Eric Chan said in a statement. “This new chapter for the house fits perfectly with our commitment to meeting the evolving needs and desires of our clients.”
The luxury industry has been growing through a slow period in the last six months, with even LVMH affected. Copping’s experience at mainstream traditional luxury brands like Oscar de la Renta is a sharp contrast from the experiments of Lanvin Lab, but one that may be a better bet in a more conservative luxury market.
“Quiet luxury and timeless fashion, from a financial perspective, are more stable and attractive,” said Javier Lastra, a luxury investor and manager of the Tema luxury ETF investment fund. “[Hiring designers with these specialties] often results in less volatility than bringing in creative directors who are more explosive and experimental and then getting into a cycle of having to replace them.”
