A New Fashion Exhibit Highlights Jeanne Lanvin’s Legacy

At a time when few women designers helm a fashion house, it feels more important than ever to highlight the legacy of those who paved the way. With “Jeanne Lanvin: Haute Couture Heritage,” Atlanta’s SCAD FASH museum attempts to not only shine a light on the pioneering milliner-turned-founder of the Lanvin, the oldest continually operating French couture house, but also the woman who inspired her career: her daughter, Marguerite Marie-Blanche di Pietro.

“Jeanne Lanvin was a real talent and visionary, and she's forgotten by the time. The name [Lanvin] remains but we forgot who Jeanne Lanvin was, so it was important to pay homage to her,” says Gaël Mamine of Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, who curated the exhibition in collaboration with SCAD FASH creative director Rafael Gomes. The pair worked with the archives of Lanvin and Parodi Costume Collection.

The exhibit — the first dedicated to the designer in the U.S. — opens with the timeline of Jeanne Lanvin (1867-1946) whose career began at the age of 13 when she started delivering hats. “She was really poor,” says Gomes. “So she would keep the bus money and walk behind the bus to deliver the hats.” Following several apprenticeships, she opened her millinery shop at 16. After giving birth to her daughter, she began designing clothes for her in 1908, marking a pivotal turning point moment for the house of Lanvin. 

“She would make these beautiful clothes for her daughter and the clients, when they were coming to buy the hats, they saw the clothes that the daughter was wearing,” says Gomes, who notes that Lanvin’s daughter was “everything” to her. “They were saying, ‘This is so beautiful. Can you do one for my daughter as well?’ And then she was doing kids clothes, then she was dressing the daughters, later the mothers.”

The exhibition, which contains more than 60 garments and focuses on Jeanne Lanvin’s most active dress-making periods (1920s to mid-‘40s), kicks off with a vignette dedicated to the drop-waist silhouettes of the '20s — a period when Lanvin expanded to not only women’s clothing but also men’s (marking one of the first times that a couture house had a dedicated men’s department), sportswear, and perfume. The exhibition then breaks into themes, with sections dedicated to techniques Jeanne Lanvin became known for, like overlaid embroidery and top-stitching, as well as signature looks, like robe de style (a silhouette characterized by a drop waist and full skirt and inspired by 18th-century court dresses) and open-back dresses.

“The very low back and showing the back — this was something completely new... it was the first time in history that they had the nudity on the back,” says Gomes. “This was something very, very sensual. You didn’t need to wear a bra or hide the bra straps.”

Some other garment highlights include what’s been presumed by the press as the last look that Jeanne Lanvin worked on before her death in 1946 — a strapless ballgown with an intricately ruched bodice that set the stage for the landscape that would adopt the New Look that Dior would go on to introduce in 1947 — as well as a stunning embroidered V-neck with a bubble skirt displayed alongside a photo of it in a Vogue editorial in 1926.

While there are only a few photos throughout the exhibit, to complement the garments, illustrations of the dresses are showcased on the walls, which women artists drew for the house and the press. (According to Gomes, this is notable as most of the illustrations were done by men at the time.) In addition to highlighting Lanvin as a designer and a mother, the exhibit aims to show her innovation and range as an entrepreneur. “It's remarkable because many great fashion designers always have other people for the business side but she was also a great businesswoman,” says Gomes. “She was great at marketing… she was the first designer that used a logo in the labels.”

According to Gomes, by the 1920s, she had more than 800 employees working for her, which pushed her to keep the house open during World War II. “She had so many employees that were dependent on her, and she did really the best you could to keep it open,” says Gomes, adding that she refused to collaborate with the Nazis, which so many designers at the time capitulated to. 

It’s an interesting time to show the exhibit, given the recent appointment of Peter Copping as the artistic director of the house. Copping, who was in attendance at the opening reception of the exhibit, following being awarded the SCAD Étoile Award in Savannah earlier in the week, gets his corner outside of the main exhibition space, with a vignette featuring prototypes of the looks and samples used in his debut Fall 2025 collection, inspired by Jeanne Lanvin. “To have this vignette shows that the house legacy lives on,” says Gomes. “You can see the inspiration of Peter Copping, how he researched the archives, what he’s doing now.”

Despite names like Alber Elbaz having designed for Lanvin, Copping’s pieces aside, the only non-Jeanne Lanvin-designed garments in the exhibition are the three dresses that her daughter oversaw following her mother’s death — something that was intentional on the curators’ parts.

“It's almost impossible now to talk about Lanvin without talking about the love story between mother and daughter. Her daughter was her everything — her muse, her inspiration, what gave her the power, the energy to do everything she did,” says Gomes. “We wanted to show that the story of the house didn't die with the designer — the daughter took care of it and then, of course, in the 100-plus years [since] there were many names [who did it justice].”