Luxe, Calme et Volupté
6221 Jeanne Lanvin
Texts by Janine Alaux, François Baudot, Sylvie de Chirée, Patrick Mauriès
1988 / 208 PAGES.
Language: Text in Italian and French
Femininity, an inconstant and impossible notion: an evanescent leitmotif fit for Jeanne Lanvin. This volume is inspired by her legend, which seems to grow ever greater despite the mists of time.
There was something unshakeably reserved in Jeanne Lanvin; something private, personal, secretive, silent. Something that kept her – and still does – from the great legendary drift of couture, from the shining and at times too-easy myth (today more alive than ever) surrounding people of the cloth, the great liturgies of luxury. There was nothing in her that tended towards the adventurous or towards calm, triumphant provocation; towards calculated asceticism or resolute eccentricity or, last but not least, towards the exacerbated and extremist taste of luxury in and of itself. The overview of her career offered by this volume highlights a simple fact: discreetly yet with admirable patience, her Maison spanned the length of time separating Worth and Schiaparelli, Redfern and Dior, attesting to and playing a leading role in the true birth and development of modern fashion in the quest for a personal formula devoid of leitmotifs and fetishes.