At least a quarter of an hour before the Givenchy show was to begin, the white-walled salons of the brand’s headquarters on Avenue George V began to fill up with guests. To understand why that is significant, consider the fact that in the skewed reality of fashion, a show is considered to have started on time if it begins half an hour late. But such was the anticipation for the designer Sarah Burton’s first show. The stakes for both her and Givenchy were high.
Ms. Burton, the former designer of Alexander McQueen who was key to saving that brand after the death of its founder, but who left it in 2023, had been away from fashion for almost a year and a half. In her 25-year-career, she had only ever worked at one house: McQueen, where her job, even when she was in charge, was largely defined by someone else’s vision of fashion.
Givenchy itself had not a designer for more than a year, not since it parted ways with its most recent creative director, Matthew M. Williams, and it had not really had a clear identity — a reason for anyone to go in and browse — for even longer. It was, essentially, existing on the fumes of its former muse, Audrey Hepburn.
Could Ms. Burton reinvent the house, as well as reinvent herself on her own terms, in a way that would make people want to shop again?
In a bracing collection that offered clarity of both line and personality, Ms. Burton excised the ghost of Audrey (it was a lovely ghost, but it had been hanging around too long) and replaced her with a different kind of woman. One who seemed both straightforward and a little subversive. Who could hold her own in a swirl of chaos and be the calm in the center of the storm — even if sometimes she created the storm. And one who understood she was enough, all on her own.
Whose gray flannel peacoat, for example, cut to fit an hourglass rather than a sailor, could double as a minidress, the better to get her out of the house and down to business. Who could saunter into a cocktail event in a backless pale pink leather halter draped from the neck and falling longer on one side, put her hands in her pockets and still command the room.
In a preview Ms. Burton had talked about returning to Givenchy’s roots, and how she had been inspired by discovering the patterns from Hubert de Givenchy’s first collection, from 1952, which had apparently been hidden in the walls of his original atelier. (Why, no one seemed to know; it’s a fashion mystery). This is the sort of story designers now like to tell, to demonstrate their connection to their brand heritage. Ms. Burton didn’t need it. There was nothing nostalgic or old-fashioned about what she made.
Well, except for the white “Givenchy, Paris, 1952” splashed across the chest of the look that opened the collection: a fishnet body suit worn over a black bra and big briefs. Later, the same look was echoed in dresses, with a flounce added to the hem, as if to suggest: not so well-behaved after all.
The elegance was in the choice of details, like the seams that snaked around the arms of curvy, thigh-length jackets — more of the big curves that are one of the overarching trends of the season — and legs of the loose trouser that went with them, building a sense of movement and airiness into the structure of the garments themselves.
Or the big bows used to cinch lemon yellow coats and champagne duchesse satin dresses, made from the supplest leather. The tulle that created volume but was malleable enough to accommodate the need to, say, sit down. The thin slices cut into the waist of a tuxedo, to expose just a bit of unexpected skin at the side. That particular part of the body is something designers love to expose, and most women hate — playing peekaboo with the middle ribs generally just isn’t that flattering — but here it worked, in part because Ms. Burton was honoring the lines of the torso rather than ignoring them.
These were clothes made to be worn, not costumes to be Instagrammed. Clothes that you wanted to buy, because they seemed to foreground the grown-up you might become.
