This article first appeared on Vogue.
With the winds of change — or gale-force gossip, rather — sweeping so many fashion houses, it falls to Peter Copping to make the first of several hugely anticipated debuts of the year. His inaugural show for Lanvin takes to the runway on Sunday, 26 January. The twinkly-eyed British designer, whose optimistic sense of humour is allied with all kinds of professional competencies, has a surprise or two up his sleeve. Appropriately enough for a house showing on the bridge day between the Paris Men’s shows and the haute couture schedule, Copping is about to show men’s and women’s collections together. “It’s really the first time I’ve done menswear,” he beams. “It’s so important to be challenged all the time.”
And there really can’t be much that Copping hasn’t done. It’s no flattery to say that the 57-year-old is one of the most highly experienced and much-liked designers who’ve been either a frontman or a key behind-scenes studio asset for years. From 2020 to last summer, he was at Balenciaga, working with Demna in the couture studio. His first job — back in 1994, recently graduated from Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art — was at Sonia Rykiel, “which gave me my first love for knitwear”. In between, he was a right-hand on pre-collections during Marc Jacobs’s tenure at Louis Vuitton, artistic director at Nina Ricci from 2009 to 2014, and briefly creative director of Oscar de la Renta from 2014 to 2015.
“I’ve worked out that I’ve actually lived more of my life in Paris than in the UK,” he laughs. “Thirty years, last year.” Knowing his way around — and experiencing the changes in the industry, and the impacts from them on design staff — means he’s bringing a professional empathy to the house of Lanvin. “When I came here I wanted to work with the team. I don’t like it so much when a new director comes in, and then everyone loses their job. There’s a really good team who know their craft and the house.”
For this conversation, Copping and I were starting off in the Lanvin studio, where he joined in September, and then — he promised — taking a stroll over to visit Jeanne Lanvin’s studio, which has been there above the boutique on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré since the 1920s.
