The Clothing Swap Surprise

Yesterday my friend Rachel had a clothing swap. I ate hummus and cookies, met some new people, and came away with two great basics and also one find so completely unexpected I kept waiting for someone to say I couldn't have it.
This vintage silk tie neck blouse is pure Catie-at-work. It's a sweet shade of milk chocolate brown, with an iridescent sheen to it. When you look very closely you can see that the texture embossed on to the material is actually wood grain, like fake paneling on top of a desk. A quirky twist on a simple classic.
I'm usually wary of accordion pleats, but these were so small and narrow that they seem fairly innocuous, not something that would make my hips look twice as wide as they actually are. It hangs straight down past my knees, not like an A-line, which is a shape I avoid on myself. It's from the Gap, and seems to be about ten years old.

Pretty sensible things. Stuff to wear to work or Thanksgiving dinner. But then I saw the dress.
The lightest weight, thinnest cotton shirtdress. It fit me perfectly, but the reddish-orange and white print was a bit loud. Tacky almost, like an old beach towel that my parents used in the seventies. I thought, When would I ever wear this? Maybe only on the hottest day of summer, or when on vacation at some tropical locale and aren't afraid to look unabashedly like a tourist. Then I looked at the label sewed into the collar.
My first reaction was to carefully, disinterestedly ask the person who brought the dress where she got it. She shrugged, and tossed off a quick answer about finding it at a thrift store long ago. I wasn't sure what to think. As I mentioned above, the material was a very thin cotton, and delicate in a questionable quality sort of way. I'd seen old Lanvin dresses in vintage stores before, priced near the sixty dollar range, and definitely of the very casual variety. Nothing fancy, nothing like the chiffon and beaded pieces Alber Elbaz has been dreaming up as of late.

I wish I was more well-versed in the history of the house of Lanvin, and would maybe therefore feel more informed about these sorts of casual dresses made from less than the highest quality of material. Back in the seventies, did Lanvin have licensing deals like Pierre Cardin and Diane von Furstenburg that churned out all sorts of products with the Lanvin label sewn in place, or was this dress a perfect example of the sort of garment that the house actually produced back then? The full story behind this piece remains to be seen, but when all is said an done I did come out of that clothing swap party with a free Lanvin dress. Not a bad party favor if you ask me.