With a penchant for wearing ice-breaking bowties, ever-cheeky Alber Elbaz takes a bold, eccentric and sometimes sexless approach to his collections for Lanvin, believing instead in "clothes that are smart…imperfection within perfection…covered allure," as he writes in his foreword to the new book Lanvin (Rizzoli, $85). Such is the contrary concept behind one of today's great brand revivals and, oddly enough, the same premise on which couturière Jeanne Lanvin founded her namesake label almost a hundred years ago, making it the world's oldest surviving couture house. In his exhaustively researched monograph, Dean Merceron pays due homage to Madame's inventive, artful and, for its day, avant-garde vision—graphic patterns, panniers, monk dresses, robes de style, oversized embellishments, ethnic appropriation—that made it the French look between the wars and that, decades later, no doubt provides endless archival inspiration for a certain cherubic successor. Here, a slideshow of our favorite images.