Emmanuelle Perrin introduces herself to Perrin Paris customers with debut bag Le Pilote

Emmanuelle Perrin, the fifth-generation creative director of Perrin Paris, debuted her first collection for the house this September, led by a new bag style called Le Pilote.

The bag re-conceptualizes the bucket silhouette around an ergonomic handle that references the house's origins in glove making. It’s described as “a bold deviation from the brand's existing design repertoire” by Perrin, whose starting point for the bag’s design was a childhood memory: holding the steering wheel in her father's lap on drives from Paris to Normandy.

"Instead of the laced up corset motif or the glove-inspired cut-outs of the Perrin legacy, I designed elements intrinsic to the body of the bag itself, letting the handle tell the story,” Perrin told FashionUnited. “The design of the handle provides the cohesion needed to stand alongside its predecessors and announce itself as a truly Perrin Paris creation."

Le Grand Pilote retails at 1,600 dollars. and Le Petit Pilote at 1,400 dollars.

Alongside the new silhouette, the FW26 collection introduces bold colourways for the brand's existing styles, spanning tobacco brown, ochre and a metallic blue.

"In stepping into this new role of creative director, I paid careful attention to maintaining the balance of honouring the legacy of the brand while also making clear and intentional departures," Perrin said. "I see these departures as a way for me to put my own signature on the heritage codes and styles, which for the FW26 collection is visibly materialised in the new colourways."

The collection was designed to hang somewhere in the balance between old and new, heritage and modernity, according to Perrin. "My goal was for the collection to embody the feelings and atmospheres of early 2000s Paris in creating both an homage and a time capsule," she said.

Taking creative control of a house that has carried her family's name for more than a century brought its own difficulty. "The hardest part is knowing which instincts to trust," she said. "Perrin has endured because it has never chased trends. This is what I inherited, and in some ways, what makes change so difficult. Every choice I make now sits alongside years of decisions that weren't mine but that of my parents, collaborators. I want to respect the DNA of the brand with any new models I propose and produce."

That respect, she said, traces back to the house's first craft. "We began as glovemakers, and that heritage remains important to me. A glove is intimate: it takes the exact shape of the hand and moves with it. As the house evolved from gloves into handbags and accessories, that idea evolved with it. I still think of everything we make as an extension of the hand. It's the theme I return to whenever I'm designing something new. No matter how far we move from the original craft, I want the evolution to feel like a slow curve rather than a sharp turn — the connection to the hand should always remain."