Mark Thomas leaves Carven after two shows
“You don’t need to break something that is starting to work,” he said before his first show. A year later he is out, and the house is without a designer again.
Mark Thomas and Carven are parting ways. “Mark Thomas, design director of Carven, will leave the company at the end of this month to pursue other opportunities,” said the French house, which belongs to China’s ICCF Group. “His vision and his work helped build the brand’s identity and style and confidently returned Carven to the fashion scene.”
“I would like to thank sincerely everyone I have had the chance to work with over these few years for helping to create new chapters for this beautiful house,” Thomas said. “I am deeply grateful to Madame Shona Tao and Mr Ye for the opportunity they gave me, and I have enormous respect for Madame Carven, who founded this house in 1945.”
Reviving Carven is a serious undertaking. In early 2018 the brand filed for bankruptcy and was then bought by China’s Icicle Group, known today as ICCF Group. The creative instability goes back a long way: Guillaume Henry ran the house from 2009 to 2014, followed by the duo of Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud, who left in 2016, and the last official creative director before Louise Trotter was Serge Ruffieux, who departed in 2018.
Thomas joined Carven in 2023, reuniting with Trotter, with whom he had previously worked at Joseph and Lacoste. Trotter left in December 2024 after only three seasons, taken by Bottega Veneta. In March 2025 Thomas was promoted to lead the design.
His first show, spring/summer 2026, was staged on the ground floor of the house’s headquarters and read as a logical continuation of the restrained, wearable language he had begun building with Trotter. “You don’t need to break something that is starting to work. You just build on top of it,” Thomas said before the debut. The second collection, shown at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, was noticeably more assured: critics singled out the tank dresses and utility coats, calling them a contemporary equivalent of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s style.
“The house’s next steps will be announced during the year,” the statement said. Carven’s next show is already for the spring/summer 2027 season.