A quick look at Givenchy

I want to have a look on the question of heritage inside the house. It has been created by Hubert de Givenchy (1). Few years after, he leaved the place of artistic director to Jhon Galiano (2), Galiano leave it to Alexender MacQueen (3), to Julien Macdonald (4), to Riccardo Tisci (5), to Clare Waight Keller (6) and today the artistic director is Matthew M. Williams (7). 

Diffferent strategies exist in order to keep the identity of the house unique and coherant through the age and under each designer's hand.

The strategie we will talking about now is the conceptual heritage. This mean that the house have a conceptual continuitie through year, The maison is, we will see that in few segond, is about classic clothes. Each Designer as artistic director work around this concept and have the liberty to interpret everything they understand by "classic clothes". It's not the same on differents house, for exemple in Chanel, you just have to do exactly what Gabrielle Chanel woul have done at your position.

So get back at Givenchy, And more precisely at the Hubert de Givenchy's(1) period. Let's have a look at his last couture collection, from 1995. 

The show is only about weamen's wear, it start with a series of coat and outside wear, followed by formal or work wear, to finish with evening dress. All of this look use classic shape, the waist are small and keep tight, the hips are exagerated (as the new look Christian Dior present few years before). Other dess are more like for princess, more bulky. The fit are quite contemporary for the year.

For Fall 1996, it's Jhon Galliano the designer, he is totally different that Hubert de Givenchy, for him the meaning of classic is much more romantic.

I really love this collection, specially the red dress with flowers and lace all over it! It's still can be understand as classical most of the dress have straight shape, their is some formal wear, most of the silhouette are either straight and long or straight and slightly shorter. But we can very feel the Galiano personality their, it all about this new romantic aestetic.

Galliano didn't last very long at this position (aproximatly 1year), may be because a miss match between his work and maison's identity but still i think this collection is very interesting,

After everything we can clearly see the difference between this 2 designer, but wait for the next one. Let me introduce you Alexender MacQueen (3), 1997.

It's one more time verry different! It's make a lot of reference about antique history, like classic period, by the use of white and gold, the use of drape, some mythological reference. but we can still se some traces of his signature. He use a lot of birds, corset, and make shoulders bigger and higher. 

Exactly as Galiano, MacQuenn didn't last very long, for the same reason i suppose. 

We could go throught the maison and all the runway like that but there is too much to talk about, maybe for a next time. So Lets skip everything to get to the spring Ready to Wear (in opposition with couture) 2024. Givenchy has been bought by LVMH (a big corp, a holdding, who have Louis Vuitton for exemple)

The designer of the collection is Matthew M. Williams (7), and it's very very differents with everything we have seen, and i'm not a big fan, but still interesting.

We can clearly see the return to the origine, we can feel the inspiratio from Hubert de Givenchy. We can say that from the original of the use of color, the formal / work wear, the use of drap, the organisation of the show with, coat at the begining, followed by dress / evening dress and formal wear. It's the same classical shape as the bigining but twisted to make them fit 2024.

Its getting late i getting sleepy, i was super happy to share that with you, did'nt hesitate to tell me if you want more, i hope you enjoyed reading this as much i enjoyed writing it ! (i'm working on my english sry :/)