Bruno Sialelli

Bruno Sialelli spent four years as the creative director who took Lanvin from a house in creative flux to a recognisable, archive-literate proposition, then left in April 2023 as the company reorganised around leather goods. He resurfaced as head of ready-to-wear design at Phoebe Philo's own label in London, and in June 2026 WWD reported, citing market sources, that he had joined Balenciaga's couture studio — a house now led by Pierpaolo Piccioli, with the title and start date of Sialelli's role not disclosed. (WWD, June 2026; WWD, April 2023)

Marseille, an opera house and a fashion school

Sialelli grew up in Marseille in the south of France, in a family with Corsican heritage on his father's side and Tunisian heritage on his mother's. His mother worked as a costumier and, by his own account, a fortune teller; his uncle was the French comedian Élie Kakou, and watching characters built through costume and styling around him shaped how he came to think about clothes before he trained in them. (Exhibition Magazine)

As a teenager he apprenticed in the costume workshop of the Marseille Opera and interned in Christian Lacroix's atelier, then moved to Paris to study at Studio Berçot, the independent training school that closed in 2023 and was folded into the Paris College of Art. He graduated in 2010 and began working as an assistant designer, a period that included time at Balenciaga during the Nicolas Ghesquière and Alexander Wang years, before moving to Acne Studios in Stockholm as senior womenswear designer in 2014. (WWD; Refinery29)

A brief spell as a womenswear designer at Rabanne followed in early 2016, then just over two and a half years running menswear design at Loewe under Jonathan Anderson's creative direction — a subordinate design post, not the house's own creative directorship, which Anderson held throughout. (Refinery29; WWD)

An unlikely appointment at Lanvin

Lanvin named Sialelli creative director on 21 January 2019, making him, at 31, the youngest person to hold the role at the house Jeanne Lanvin founded in 1889. He was also its fourth creative director in four years, after a run of short tenures that followed Alber Elbaz's 2015 departure. Coverage at the time noted that he was "relatively unknown" and not the kind of headline-grabbing hire other houses had been making — a profile that, in hindsight, gave him room to develop a point of view without the pressure of an immediate signature statement. Lanvin pointed to his demonstrated ability to move between men's and women's design, built across his Acne Studios, Rabanne and Loewe years, as a reason for the appointment. (Forbes; NR; HERO)

His stated project was to reconnect the house with its founder rather than to invent a new one. "Jeanne Lanvin was ahead of her time and created what was essentially the first lifestyle brand, with children's clothes, fragrance, sportswear, furs, furniture and made-to-measure looks for men," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "I want to bring back Madame Lanvin's enterprising, forward-looking vision." His practice leaned on the house archive for material rather than for pure nostalgia: an art deco print pulled from Jeanne Lanvin's own designs ran through a full ready-to-wear and accessories collection, and the handle of the PM Hobo Cat bag was drawn from an andiron the interior designer Armand-Albert Rateau made for Jeanne Lanvin's fireplace. "I don't think I'll ever be the type of designer who invents new fabrics or silhouettes," Sialelli said. "Rather, I look to combine elements and layers that have never been seen together. I'm intent on reimagining forgotten elements of Jeanne Lanvin's archive." (The Hollywood Reporter)

That approach found an audience in Hollywood. Claire Danes wore the ruffled yellow gown from the finale of his Fall/Winter 2022 collection to the 2022 Met Gala, and Jesse James Keitel wore a blush-pink lace dress from the same show to the Queer as Folk premiere the following month — evidence, by 2022, that a designer few had heard of in 2019 had built a genuine celebrity-dressing pipeline around archive-driven design. (The Hollywood Reporter)

On the commercial side, the chunky, fat-laced Curb sneaker, introduced during his tenure, became one of the collections that drew a younger customer to the house alongside its leather goods. (WWD)

Departure and a change of direction for the house

Lanvin staffers were told on 14 April 2023 that Sialelli would leave after four years, as the company — since 2018 majority-owned by the Chinese consortium now known as Lanvin Group, and since late 2022 a publicly traded company — moved to emphasise leather goods and accessories, which by then accounted for more than half of the brand's global business, alongside a new in-house incubator, Lanvin Lab, built around guest "creative partnerships." Sialelli said in a statement: "I am deeply proud of what we have achieved at Lanvin over the past four years and wish to thank Lanvin and my team who through their unique talents and dedication have accompanied me in this great adventure." Lanvin's ready-to-wear collections continued to show at Paris Fashion Week alongside the new leather goods division. Peter Copping, previously creative director of Nina Ricci and Oscar de la Renta, later became Lanvin's creative director. (WWD)

After Lanvin

Sialelli's next public role, from July 2024, was head of ready-to-wear design at Phoebe Philo's eponymous London-based label, which the former Céline and Chloé designer launched independently in 2023 — a design-team position under Philo's own creative direction, comparable in structure to his earlier post at Loewe. In June 2026, WWD reported that he had since joined Balenciaga's couture studio, without a confirmed title or start date; Balenciaga declined to comment on the composition of its studio, and the report noted the coincidence that Copping — his own successor at Lanvin — had also passed through Balenciaga's couture atelier earlier in his career. (WWD, June 2026)

Reading and dating the work

Only the Lanvin years, January 2019 to April 2023, represent Sialelli's own creative direction of a house; the Acne Studios, Rabanne and Loewe roles that preceded it, and the Phoebe Philo and Balenciaga studio work that followed, were design positions carried out under someone else's creative direction, not tenures where the design point of view was principally his. A Lanvin garment or accessory from those four years is his; a Loewe menswear piece from 2016–2019 or a Phoebe Philo ready-to-wear piece from 2024 onward reflects a team he contributed to, led by Jonathan Anderson and Phoebe Philo respectively. Because Lanvin garments can reach retail seasons after a runway show, and because the house's leather goods and Lanvin Lab strands continued to develop after his exit, a Lanvin piece sold in late 2023 is not automatically a Sialelli design — the season code and any accompanying archive references, such as the art deco print or the Rateau-derived hardware described above, are more reliable guides than the sale date alone.

References

• Miles Socha. "Bruno Sialelli Is Joining Balenciaga Studio: Sources." WWD, 15 June 2026.
• Miles Socha. "EXCLUSIVE: Lanvin, Bruno Sialelli to Part Ways." WWD, 14 April 2023.
• Laurie Brookins. "THR Fall Style: Lanvin's Creative Director Mines Rich Archives to Become a Go-to for Hollywood." The Hollywood Reporter, 19 September 2022.
• Sophie Abriat. "Bruno Sialelli: A Portrait." Exhibition Magazine.
• Georgia Simmonds. "Lanvin Appoints Bruno Sialelli As New Creative Director." Refinery29, 22 January 2019.
• HERO. "Lanvin unveil their new creative director appointment." 22 January 2019.
• Mario Abad. "Lanvin Finally Has A New Creative Director." Forbes, 21 January 2019.
• NR. "Bruno Sialelli."