Clean Sweep- Two seasons into her tenure at Carven, Louise Trotter is reimagining the label with pieces at once mindful, freeand beautiful.

Two seasons into her tenure at Carven, Louise Trotter is reimagining the label with pieces at once mindful, freeand beautiful. In February of last year, Trotter took up the role of creative director at the 79-year-old maison, reawakening it from a five-year slumber, and a chauffeur—customary for an artistic director at the helm of a Parisian fashion house—simply doesn’t fly with her bluff Sunderland upbringing.

- By Julia Hobbs

Early on weekday mornings, Louise Trotter begins the 20-minute cycle from her home on Paris’s Left Bank to Carven’s headquarters just off the Champs-Élysées. By now, she knows the commute by heart: In February of last year, Trotter took up the role of creative director at the 79-year-old maison, reawakening it from a five-year slumber, and a chauffeur—customary for an artistic director at the helm of a Parisian fashion house—simply doesn’t fly with her bluff Sunderland upbringing.

“As a designer, you have to remain part of society,” she explains. “How do you feel the world if you’re not in the middle of it?”

Cycling through the streets of the French capital lets her observe at close range the “busy women” who inspire her work—she’ll often count how many are wearing sneakers, or make a mental note of the bags they carry. It’s also an opportunity to road test her designs in the wild: On the day we meet, Trotter is wearing a long black dress from her fall 2024 collection, cut from a high-twist wool tailoring fabric imbued with a delicate sheen; on its B-side, you catch a glimpse of a bare back. Unlike her predecessors at Carven, Trotter isn’t interested in dressing an ingenue—she wants us to marvel at the beauty of clothes seemingly undone, as though their wearer is gradually undressing—even while on a bike, or riding the subway.

Work in progress. Trotter at work in her Paris studio.