Bouchra Jarrar at the finale of the Lanvin Fall 2017 show. Getty
Moroccan-French designer Bouchra Jarrar is to exit the storied maison of Lanvin after 16 months at the helm, reported WWD within the hour. Jarrar took over from the long-standing creative designer Alber Elbaz in March 2016. Reports from Business of Fashion have cited drops in sales as the driving factor behind this news.
Last week, Bouchra Jarrar was inducted as an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters at the Palais Galliera in Paris, with guests including Farida Khelfa, DJ Frédéric Sanchez, and makeup artist Tom Pecheux. As one of France’s highest civilian honors, the award celebrates significant contributions to the enrichment of French cultural heritage.
In the July/August issue of Vogue Arabia, Bouchra Jarrar discusses how her experiences have shaped her discourse as a designer. “[F]ashion is universal, and my absolute desire is to dress all the women of the world, so opening myself beyond my origins has helped me to express something wider and more generous in my collections.” The designer has only produced two collections for Lanvin.
In Spring 2017, in a speech at the Condé Nast International Conference 2017 that took place in Muscat, former Lanvin creative Elbaz reflected: “Without designers there are not going to be dreams, and without dreams there is no fashion, and without dreams, there are no perfumes. When we designers create, we must first start with a dream and intuition. Marketing comes later, not before – I repeat: marketing comes later, not before. Using intuition is risky and I know that making a mistake can be costly, and I know shareholders might fire you for making these mistakes. But some of the best innovation in the world happened because someone trusted their intuition and went for it.” Food for thought.
Check back on Vogue.me for further developments.
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