Alexis Martial heading to Carven?

By

Dominique Muret

Published
Dec 9, 2014

Two months after the departure of Guillaume Henry, Carven may have finally found a new artistic director for its women's line. According to sources cited by WWD, the house appears to be in talks with Alexis Martial, the young French designer in charge of the women's collections at Italian brand Iceberg since September 2013.

Guillaume Henry left his role as artistic director in October to replace Peter Copping at Nina Ricci, where he will debut on 5 January.

Following his departure, Henri Sebaoun, manager of the company, declared that he was looking for "someone talented and with experience, like Guillaume Henry when he arrived at Carven," emphasising that the future artistic director "should incarnate possibility."

Alexis Martial corresponds rather well to this profile. After studying art and fashion design in France, the designer, born in 1985, started his professional career at Givenchy in 1997, responsible for Givenchy's women's knitwear, ready to wear and haute couture lines. In 2012, he was promoted creative director of Paco Rabanne, then looking to relaunch itself on the Parisian runways, before taking on the reins of Iceberg's principle women's line.

In terms of menswear, Paul Surridge may be the one to take over at Carven, this still according to certain rumours. The British designer has just left Z Zegna, the young line of Italian menswear group Ermenegildo Zegna, for which he was artistic director for three years.

Previously he was senior menswear designer at Burberry and head designer at Calvin Klein. Most recently Paul Surridge was head menswear designer at Jil Sander before arriving at Zegna.