How’s this for brain-frying, eyes-crossing craftsmanship? The house of Lanvin has designed the official uniform for Alain-Charles Perrot, the newest academician at the French Académie des Beaux-Arts and the architect-in-chief of French historical monuments. The jacket’s olive-branch embroidery alone (drawn by Perrot) took 600 hours.

Clearly, neither expense nor detail was spared for France’s top dog for all things architectural. Handmade in Lanvin’s Paris workshops at 15 Faubourg Saint Honoré (above the boutique), the jacket and pants required 80 hours, while the shirt took only 12 hours. That’s on top of the 600 hours to hand-stitch those olive branches. For a bit of perspective, Lanvin says a bespoke suit typically requires 80 hours to complete. All told, this particularly laborious project consumed the house for six months.

But really, it’s par for the course for Lanvin, which this year has revived its 113-year-old bespoke tradition. In 1901, founder Jeanne Lanvin designed the outfit for her first academician client, Cyrano de Bergerac author Edmond Rostand. Other esteemed dignitaries soon followed, including Paul Valéry, Georges Duhamel, André Maurois, and the great Jean Cocteau, author of Les Enfants Terribles.