Name
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Lanvin, Jeanne
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Other names
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Jeanne-Marie Lanvin
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Dates & places of birth and death
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January 1, 1867, Paris
July 6, 1946, Paris
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Nationality
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French
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Places of residence
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The eldest of 11 children living in Paris, France
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Role
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Designer
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Occupation
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She trained as a dressmaker at a French fashion house called Talbot and then later worked as a milliner. She had the passion, unique talent, energy and enormous potential. In 1890, backed by a devoted client, she opened up a millinery shop.
Jeanne Lanvin, who by now was a doting mother, also designed an extensive mini-me wardrobe for her daughter Marguerite Marie-Blanche di Pietro. She made such beautiful clothes for her daughter, using sophisticated textiles and colours, that they began to attract the attention of a number of wealthy people who requested copies for their own children and Jeanne branched out into childrenswear.
For this reason, Jeanne Lanvin never had a 'look' that characterised her thinking for any one season. Every collection offered a wide variety of options for clients, carefully calibrated to cover a wide age range and a spectrum of figure types. Everything she offered her customers was meant to enhance their femininity, not just in their own eyes but also those of the husbands and lovers who paid the bills.
Interested in Medieval and Renaissance art, along with Egypt and antiquity, she created a soft but vibrant blue, guaranteed to flatter most skin and hair types. Called Fra Angelico blue, it became almost a trademark.
By 1927, when she launched Arpège, one of the world’s most successful fragrances even today, she commissioned one of France's top architects to design the black glass ball which was its bottle. His name was Armand Albert Rateau and he had already designed her Paris home, her shops and her villa in the country. Rateau became part of the business. He managed Lanvin Sport for her and, together, they created artefacts for the home, now Art Deco collector's items.
Despite all this expansion, Lanvin fully realised the enduring power of the mother and daughter theme, which is why, to this day, the bottle for Arpege is still decorated with the original motif by Paul Iribe of a mother bending over her daughter.
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Titles & Honors
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French haute couture fashion...Creator, Designer, Businesswoman who knew how to place herself in the burgeoning couture market in the early 1920s.
One of her great coups came in the thirties when she received an order for party dresses from Queen Elizabeth, for the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. Lanvin sent with them a doll dressed identically, a gesture that became a tradition with mother and daughter looks, but was not carried over when she started to design for boys.
By the time Lanvin died in 1946, she had shops reaching far beyond Paris, with stores in Cannes, Nice, and Biarritz. The French government even presented her with a Legion of Honor for her contributions to haute couture, or high end, custom designs.
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Relationships
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Father was a journalist
Briefly married to an Italian nobleman, Henri Emilio Georges Di Pietro in 1895, Lanvin had a daughter two years later, christened Marguerite Marie-Blanche, who was destined to make her mother's position in Paris not only unique but financially buoyant, even though the marriage broke down when the child was only six. A journalist like her father, her second husband Xaviar Melet was eventually to become French consul to Manchester, England, although Lanvin herself as far as is known, had little to do with the city.
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Publications
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Always aware and alert to what was happening, Jeanne Lanvin first realised in 1922 (the year when La Garçonne ,"The Bachelor Girl," by Victor Margaritte was published) that the intrusive hat laden with trimmings that she had always shown was not in the mood of the day.
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Notes
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https://www.lanvin.com/us/maison/history/
https://agnautacouture.com/?s=Jeanne+Lanvin&submit=Search
https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/education/jeanne-lanvin-1867-1946
https://study.com/academy/lesson/jeanne-lanvin-biography-history-designs.html
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