Designer Mood Board: Sophie Delafontaine

Longchamp Autumn/Winter ’18 celebrates the French label’s 70th anniversary this year, with a throwback to the maison’s iconography and a modern free-spiritedness. By Amy Yasmine.

With a history spanning 70 glorious years, how does a luxury house keep an eye on the future and another in the past? For Longchamp’s artistic director Sophie Delafontaine, her answer to this is the latest Autumn/Winter ’18 collection, which remixes the maison’s classic prints and iconic pieces with 21st-century irreverence. Case in point: Longchamp’s iconic emblem, a galloping horse motif, adorns a sensual silk midi dress here, a velvet maxi there. On a more whimsical note, the motif’s bridle is also transformed into graphic stripes, like on a pussy-bow silk dress, complete with a horse bit and stirrups, while other variations feature saddlelike corset belts. Here, the collection deviates from its hallmark ’60s mod appeal, to ’70s bohemia by way of Stevie Nicks. Think excessively fringed boots, rock ’n’ roll grommets, and touches of dark leather on lace, while the maison’s latest Amazone bags punks things up with slinky chains. Bohemian rhapsody, with a Parisian state of mind.

Rugged leather kinked up in all the right places Exoticleather cigarettecase, Longchamp Leather workers at Longchamp’s first production studio in Segré, France, built in 1959 Longchamp leather goods showcased at the Paris Fair in 1948 Turenne Chevallereau’s illustration of one of the last mills in the Paris, a landmark that inspired the maison’s iconic emblem A Longchamp luggage tag from 1949 Sophie Delafontaine’s rugged bohemian with an equestrian twist Stirrup motifs transformed into graphic lines French Line liner luggage tag

Seventies fringing with a Left Bank attitude

A Longchamp artisan putting together a quilted Amazone bag