Founded in 1889, Lanvin is regularly considered Paris’ oldest couture house, and yet is still to this day its most iconoclastic. Legendary designer Jeanne Lanvin built a fashion empire, perhaps the first of its kind, and had by the 1920s already expanded into home décor, fur goods, menswear, fragrances, and jewelry, all of which were shockingly modern to the French establishment. Lanvin’s designs of then, as now, looked toward contemporary art for inspiration (often incorporating Deco modernist motifs) and one can expect that any piece of vintage Lanvin will serve as a talisman of that bygone cultural conversation.

Photo: Courtesy of Lanvin