Last season, Bruno Sialelli took Lanvin to Shanghai, staging an actual, IRL catwalk show (remember them?) with real-life guests for SS21. It was a savvy move: Lanvin’s parent company, Fosun, is based in China, and the country’s market offers the greatest growth potential in luxury fashion — and it’s one of the few places on earth where business is bouncing back from the pandemic quicker than the markets in Europe and the US.
The collection Bruno presented on the zigzag walkways of the Yuyuan Garden, a beloved landmark of China’s largest city, was a tribute to the Lanvin of the 20s and 30s — the Lanvin of the house’s founder Jeanne Lanvin — and the art deco splendour of the world between the wars.
During his tenure at Lanvin, Bruno Sialelli has walked a fine line between the different modes of the house, slowly mapping out his own vision for the label, which is equal parts magical and whimsical, somewhere between splendour and reality.
Here for AW21, he evolved those Lanvin-isms he referenced last season, honing in on a different kind of decadence. For the collection he reimagined Gwen Stefani’s “Rich Girl” music video, and, with a straight face, paid tribute to the joy of excess; to parties in luxury hotels with fabulous models. It was quite unapologetic; a celebration of escapism, wish fulfilment. They described it as “anticipatory” — which is the default setting for pretty much every desire at the moment — so there were fun prints, feathers, little black dresses, sunglasses worn indoors, gloves, animal prints, gowns, trails of fabric.
It chimed well with the sense of optimism creeping into fashion this season; it’s less introspective, more excited, more hopeful, everyone is busy dreaming the future into being, creating collections for those dreams. And here Bruno was, leading the charge with one that was positively full of glamour, celebrating the joy of dressing up and going out and having fun.
