At Lanvin, Trying to Recreate Desire

PARIS — Bruno Sialelli does not look like a knight in shining armor.

Clean cut and solidly built, dressed in a blush-colored sweater, checked blouson jacket, wide-cut trousers and sneakers, with a diamond stud and three thin gold hoops gleaming in one earlobe and an array of rings on his fingers, Mr. Sialelli, 31, looks the kind of cool millennial you might spot in SoPi (the trendy neighborhood south of Pigalle) or hanging out with friends in a cafe along the Canal St.-Martin.

But for Lanvin, Mr. Sialelli, its new creative director, could be a savior. A relatively unknown and untested designer, he is the French fashion house’s fourth in less than four years, and something of a Hail Mary pass. His appointment was announced officially only last month, following Mr. Sialelli’s release from a noncompete clause with his previous employer, the Spanish house Loewe, owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

On Wednesday at the Cluny Museum, the French national museum of the Middle Ages, exactly what it all means will begin to become clear as the designer introduces his first collection for the beleaguered brand.

That is a lot of pressure but 10 days before the debut, sitting in Lanvin’s light-filled showroom, Mr. Sialelli allowed that his youth, his obscurity and the recent downward trajectory of the brand might ultimately work to the house’s advantage. In any case, he personally has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

“We can’t be one of those houses where there’s something for everyone,” Mr. Sialelli said, speaking with animation and the occasional broad gesture. “We take compelling archetypes and make them our own. I have a way of thinking that’s intrinsic to my age. I believe it’s possible to find modernity and come up with new ways of doing things that recreate desire.”

Jean-Philippe Hecquet, Lanvin’s chief executive and the man who selected Mr. Sialelli for the job, weighed in, saying, “Youth is necessary to fashion, I think, but Bruno is unique for his age.” Mr. Hecquet himself was appointed only last August by Lanvin’s new owner, the Chinese group Fosun International; he previously had been C.E.O. of the accessible fashion brand Sandro, owned by another Chinese conglomerate, Shandong Ruyi.

“Knowing fashion is one thing, but understanding fashion and being aligned with your times is another,” Mr. Hecquet added. “Bruno has the ability to understand trends and reinterpret important elements of our history.”

That history, however, has not always been smooth.

A Troubled Past

Lanvin, established in 1889 and the oldest continuously operating couture house in France, was revived in 2001 as a multicultural success story: the Taiwanese investor Shaw-Lan Wang bought it from L’Oréal and installed the Moroccan-Israeli designer Alber Elbaz. Together, the two transformed the house into the epitome of modern French elegance.

Meryl Streep wore Lanvin. So did Natalie Portman, Amy Adams and Emma Stone. Then, in October 2015, to the shock of the fashion world, Mr. Elbaz was fired, and what had been a fairy tale devolved into a nightmare of plummeting sales and designer exits.

Last February, Fosun bought Lanvin for a reported $120 million. But by then, France’s grande dame was considered damaged goods.

Mr. Sialelli, however, described the situation as “a beautiful challenge.”

He also described his application for creative director as a last-minute, dark-horse bid. “They had a spectrum of shortlisters, and I guess mine was the color that was missing,” he said. He credits his natural enthusiasm and expansiveness for helping him land the job, as well as an “all-terrain” portfolio spanning women’s and men’s wear with a taste for storytelling rather than, say, a specialization in techniques like tailoring or flou. “It all needed to come together with a shared story and vocabulary,” he said, “from the aspirational image of the brand down to the shop floor.”

Raised in Marseille, France, Mr. Sialelli began his career with a part-time student job working on costumes for his hometown’s opera before moving to an internship with Christian Lacroix in Paris. After studying at Studio Berçot, a fashion design academy in Paris, he landed a job in the women’s wear studio at Balenciaga (spanning the Nicolas Ghesquière and Alexander Wang eras), Acne and Paco Rabanne. Most recently, he spent four years working under the designer Jonathan Anderson at Loewe, focusing on what Mr. Sialelli called “a new masculinity” for men’s wear.

The designer describes himself as compulsively curious. While visiting the Lanvin archives a few months back, he said, he derived several ideas — and not just for clothing — that he considered valid for our times. “Jeanne Lanvin traveled all over, brought things back and made them hers,” Mr. Sialelli said, referring to a folkloric print from Egypt as an example. “Some of it’s surprising but it’s legitimate. It would be fun to explore.”

The Next Chapter

One day earlier this month Mr. Sialelli was in a small room at the atelier, adjusting garments on a fit model with the help of a stylist and three members of his design team. The mood was almost Zen: Everyone had put their phones on a conference table to concentrate on the work. A smattering of looks already were hanging on several racks.

“Reality with an element of surprise” is how Mr. Sialelli described his lineup, a narrative that ranged from day wear in ethereal layers of chiffon (“grounded flou”) to spliced-together tartans, medieval manuscript-style prints and a few long dresses with holographic fringe or metallic embroidery that seemed to nod to Klimt. He called those his “Elizabeth Taylors and Romy Schneiders.” Even Babar made an appearance, albeit not exactly as one might expect.

On the walls, a mood board mapped Mr. Sialelli’s vision for the season in a magpie collage of vintage magazine spreads, archival motifs and what Mr. Sialelli called “a fracas of archetypes”: Fassbinder meets “Ladyhawke” meets Jean Genet meets manga.

If you can’t quite picture it, never mind. Mr. Sialelli can, and he seems comfortable conflating heritage Lanvin signatures — a velvet yoke, a gathered sleeve — with anime, whether on a flowing dress or fur coat. Prints and embroidery techniques lifted from the archives nod to the show venue, with stylized riffs on labyrinths, illuminated manuscripts and dragon slayers, tweaked for the street with gold finger caps and ear shields.

“We’re not out to revolutionize design but there are infinite combinations,” he said. “The angle is what makes the proposition new.”

In keeping with a trend, and following the departure in November of Lanvin’s longtime men’s wear designer, Lucas Ossendrijver, Mr. Sialelli’s presentation will include looks for women and men, making him the first designer in a generation to produce both collections for the house.

“Women and men cohabitate,” he said. “They’re not a couple; it’s more nuanced than that. They are young people who are woke, they express diversity, they’re a little masculine and a little feminine. The brand experience should express that, too.”

When it comes to the house’s organization, one of his hopes is to reprise the kind of “flat hierarchy” he said he experienced at the Acne Studio in Stockholm.

“There was this idea of democracy in fashion that feels really modern. Everyone has the chic to speak to everyone else in the same way,” he said. “Today, transparency is an obligation on many levels. Respect for self, respect for others is the energy we’re after.”

In the days before the show, the in-house atmosphere appeared to be cautiously optimistic and even upbeat. The industry, however, was somewhat skeptical.

Wait and See

When fashion executives and industry experts are asked about Mr. Sialelli and the future of Lanvin, reactions tend to range from enthusiasm to “good luck with that.” But almost no one wants to speak on the record. It’s as if they are afraid a dark cloud now follows the name.

“It’s important to remember that fashion, in some cases, is no longer about the clothes,” said Hélène Le Blanc, a luxury branding and communications consultant. She noted that Lanvin failed to produce an “It” bag at a time when handbags contribute substantially to the bottom line or, more recently, a monster sneaker. Lanvin’s relatively small perfume business, including its classic Arpège fragrance, is under license to Interparfums.

Serge Carreira, a lecturer in fashion and luxury at the French university Sciences Po, thinks the brand still has resonance. “What’s particular about Lanvin is that it still means something without being stuck on a particular image,” he said. “It’s very malleable and open to interpretation. It’s still very feminine but it has meaning in men’s wear. Now all they need is the daring to write a new page.”

Now that design duties have been consolidated, Mr. Hecquet said the brand would turn its attention to key categories, including the imminent appointment of what he described as two “top talents” to design handbags and shoes. He also said Lanvin is rethinking the house web strategy.

Of Lanvin’s brick-and-mortar stores, the Paris flagship is scheduled for a revamp, as is the Los Angeles store on Rodeo Drive. It also is considering new locations for its London, New York and Milan stores and an aggressive expansion in Asia, including three new stores in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.

The Shanghai store is scheduled to open by the end of the year, to coincide with an exhibition at the Fosun Foundation for contemporary arts that will be designed to illustrate Lanvin’s heritage and position within the international fashion landscape. In Hong Kong, the new men’s and women’s shop is to open Oct. 19 at K11, the trendy new mall in Kowloon.

But while finding success in China is essential to Lanvin’s future, Mr. Hecquet said, he stressed that the brand would remain true to its French roots, with European production and a unified, upscale product offered worldwide.

In Paris, Lanvin has winnowed staff and office space. After renovations to offices at 15 and 22 Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré, home to Lanvin’s men’s and women’s boutiques, the brand will centralize its teams in those two buildings, vacating a third at number 17. “We’re big in terms of history but small and beautiful, which means we can be agile like entrepreneurs. That’s a strength. We can move fast,” Mr. Hecquet said, gazing over the Paris skyline from his office’s seventh-floor terrace.

“We have a view over our ambitions,” he added, gesturing toward the lushly cultivated garden on the terrace of the Hermès flagship opposite. Beyond were the headquarters of Chanel and Celine and a smattering of Dior boutiques, with the Sacre Coeur Basilica as a backdrop.

Madame Lanvin, the house’s founder, once traveled in the same circles at the Hermès family, Mr. Sialelli said. For him, the woman herself may hold the key to reviving the house.

“When I looked into what Lanvin represented then, the way she traveled and how she explored what we now call lifestyle, I realized she was a true modern, self-made woman,” he said. “It opens up all sorts of venues to express different subjects and moments in life. Hopefully we can preserve the know-how we have and maybe bring in fresh ones. It just have to pass through the right prism.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Sialelli gets to show the fashion world his true colors.