Givenchy heads in a new direction — we’re just not quite sure (yet) what it is
Reporting from Paris — The spring and summer 2018 Givenchy collection presented here Sunday was the start of a new chapter for the 65-year-old French luxury label, but to be honest we’re not quite sure what it is.
To be fair, Clare Waight Keller only signed on as artistic director in May, which left her precious little time to imprint her personality on the house that Hubert built. Don’t get us wrong, there was plenty to like in the collection (more on that below), and anyone who wasn’t keen on the dark romanticism and angry Rottweiler imagery of the dozen-year Riccardo Tisci era will find it a welcome change of pace.
It’s just that the show didn’t seem to provide much of a road map to where the designer, whose ’70s bohemian vibe was so strong at the end of her tenure at Chloé, might be taking the label. The immediate post-show comparisons were to Yves Saint Laurent, though that was probably because the rocker-boy menswear (the men’s and women’s spring and summer 2018 collections were sent down the runway together) had a heady whiff of Hedi Slimane’s aesthetic to it and a handful of pieces (both men’s and women’s) were covered in gold-metallic-foil-lip-prints, a motif that’s been associated with YSL since the early 1970s.
If you knew what you were looking for, you might have been able to tease out some references to collections of Givenchy past (a clover print from 1961 was one, tiger-stripe and leopard-spot graphics from the early ’80s was another) served up in a color palette heavy on the black and white – the big color story coming out of Paris Fashion Week – as well as navy blue with accents of mint green and vermilion.
Some women’s pieces had a military vibe (a standout was a sharp-shouldered, double-breasted dress with gold buttons and epaulets). Bold blue stripes and varsity-style jackets gave other looks an almost collegiate vibe. And, yes, a few looks — particularly black-and-white floral print frocks and a black dress of cascading ruffles — dipped into diaphanous damsel land.
Collegiate and military nods could also be seen on the men’s side, which also offered up a deep bench of leather jackets and blazers and car coats in traditional menswear fabrics with contrasting leather yokes or allover tiger stripes.
And both collections had a surprising number of denim jeans and jackets in the mix.
“In the world of physics [t]ransformation describes the sublime process when one element becomes another,” the designer wrote in the show notes. “Fashion is a tool for self-metamorphosis. It can transform the spirit through a new attitude.”
So let’s frame the collection that came down the catwalk at the Palais de Justice as just the very first step in that sublime process. Clare Waight Keller has introduced us to her Adam and Eve – her working prototypes of the new Givenchy woman and Givenchy man. Now they – and she – need to (to quote the Book of Genesis) “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.”
We can’t wait to watch it all happen.
For more musings on all things fashion and style, follow me at @ARTschorn.
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