Clothes for modern women - and a modern red carpet - at Givenchy couture
Clare Waight Keller’s couture collection for Givenchy was notable for three reasons. Remarkably, it was her first ever couture collection. It was Givenchy’s first couture collection in eight years and the first time it has had a woman at its helm (a British one of that). It also happened to be a highlight of the week.
For some, it was the highlight.
Couture must grapple with all manner of issues these days - the economics of running a slow-delivery business that’s the opposite of see now, wear now not least among them. But perhaps its most pressing challenge is trying to figure out what kind of sex appeal it wants to project on the red carpet in these charged times.
The red carpet, is, after all, couture’s chief window to the world. Even if most dresses are either substantially remodelled to make them more actress-friendly, or designed from scratch, the couture shows are a starting point.
Elizabeth Saltzman, who styles Saoirse Ronan (Oscar Contender for Lady Bird) and Kate Young (Margot Robbie and Natalie Portman) have both been front row this week keeping their antennae tuned.
Givenchy could be their answer – Nicole Kidman, in one of her more successful outings, wore a Clare Waight Keller designed black gown to the Golden Globes two weeks ago.
This collection was largely black (and white). Waight Keller, whose tenure at Chloé was marked by pastels and muted metals and an increasingly fluttery, filmy lightness, has made an impressive and fast conversion to the Givenchy mind-set.
Tailoring was quietly impeccable, no tricksy, statement shoulders on her black jackets, merely perfectly proportioned ones. Volume was architectural and controlled, never fluttery.
From the opening looks – a series of tiered or full skirts and dresses, peeking out from under sculptural black jackets featuring different versions of a shawl neckline – Waight Keller flexed her impressive sense of balance, both in terms of proportions and sensibility.
It was neither monastic nor Kardashianified, although monks and Kardashians would find pieces here to please them. She wasn’t presenting an edgy, off level of taste, as so many designers do, but a series of options.
And she had dug deep into the Givenchy archives from the 1950s, when Hubert de Givenchy was still influenced by his mentor Cristobal Balenciaga. Reworking proportions, introducing new Japanese fabrics along with classic couture favourites such as faille and duchess satin, and hand dying everything to get the right depth of black (something she’d never had the opportunity to try in her previous jobs) she produced a couture collection that looked relevant to today’s woman.
Beaded column dresses in pewter seemed far more in keeping with the current mood than the blingier options. Feather lined coats were less obvious than feather trims. Tuxedo and rubber-look trenches, worn open over white tiered and pleated gowns, added another 2018 touch.
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Intelligent archiving rather than slavish homage, this was a tremendously assured debut. If she had been overwhelmed by anything, she said afterwards, “it was the limitless scope. But once you start to find your passions in a house, it becomes easier. You can focus.”
It was the only time this week I heard fashion editors (as opposed to billionaire clients with hermetically sealed lives) express anything like longing.
