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French fashion house Givenchy has a stellar heritage. The 73-year-old label was behind one of the most genuinely iconic garments in fashion history: the little black dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. However, since onetime Givenchy creative director Clare Waight Keller designed the Duchess of Sussex’s wedding dress in 2018, the brand’s cachet has diminished.
But after an impressive debut by British-born Sarah Burton, formerly the longtime creative director of Kering-owned Alexander McQueen, the brand may yet recover its reputation. In its heyday it was known for elegance, and Burton’s collection offered a pared-back, modern vision.
Some guests who had planned to attend were stranded in London after an unexploded second world war bomb, found near Gare du Nord train station, led Eurostar to cancel its trains. Those who made the show at the brand’s historic headquarters, including actors Gwendoline Christie and Vanessa Kirby, were seated on individual stacks of brown paper packages.
Sarah Burton’s debut at Givenchy included jackets and coats with strong tailored shoulders . . . © Indigital.tv
. . . and an acid yellow strapless dress made from 140 metres of tulle © Indigital.tv
These packages were intended to evoke a cache of Givenchy patterns from the first 1952 collection, which were discovered inside a wall at Hubert de Givenchy’s first maison at 8 Avenue Alfred de Vigny. This became the starting point for Burton’s new vision of Givenchy. At a preview before the show, she said she didn’t rely on the original patterns, but the discovery drew her back to the first collection, and she was struck by its “almost Hitchcockian simplicity”. So she decided to “focus on cut and silhouette”.
Burton is one of the few female creative directors at a major French luxury house, and she said: “I was thinking about perceptions of beauty in women. There’s this idea that you have to dress like a man to be powerful . . . but there are moments in your life where you want to feel sexy or you feel fragile or you’re vulnerable, and all of them are part of what it is to be a woman.”
Burton paired up 1950s-style bras with duchesse satin skirts . . . © Indigital.tv
. . . and presented herringbone wool suits and coats with hourglass construction © Indigital.tv
Tailoring was the bedrock of the collection. A black grain de poudre jacket came with strong tailored shoulders and sculpted waist and hips, while the arm seams ran from front to back to create a curve. The hem of the jacket was slashed and slightly frayed to offset the perfection. Burton explained: “I hacked the bottom up . . . there is a nod to things unravelling and things falling apart. Maybe that’s the situation we’re in at the moment.”
There were also black tuxedo suits, herringbone wool suits and coats, and grey mohair sharkskin suits, all of which shared this hourglass construction and felt like a fresh, flattering alternative to oversized suits that can swamp the body. And there were dresses too, with clean lines and graphic silhouettes.
The bow — a quintessential Givenchy motif — was updated and reimagined as a giant bonded leather scarf and knotted sleeves. There were 1950s-style bras used as outerwear, worn with duchesse satin skirts with floral embroidery, and for the finale, an acid yellow strapless dress made from 140 metres of tulle: all perfect for the red carpet.
At Chloé, Chemena Kamali presented a collection infused with 1970s references . . . © Garofalo Alessandro
. . . with models wearing an eclectic mix of négligée-style dresses, maxi skirts, cropped jackets and low belts © Garofalo Alessandro
Chloé’s Chemena Kamali is one of the other few female head designers, and she offered a very different aesthetic. She has almost single-handedly ushered boho back into the fashion conversation since her debut a year ago, and her collections have all have a 1970s-inflected softness and romance to them.
Talking backstage after the show, she echoed Burton’s thoughts on the different facets of femininity: “I was thinking a lot about the evolution of the Chloé woman and how we capture all of her different sides. We are all multi-faceted women and we are not always the same at different stages in our lives, we have shifting moods and feelings.”
This was reflected in eclectic pairings such as négligée-style dresses in antique shades of shell pink and cream worn with cropped shearling coats, velvet jackets and long quilted housecoat-like jackets. Maxi skirts were worn with lace-edged silk camisoles and little lace bed jackets, with low belts slung over the top. This wasn’t a rerun of the 2000s Chloé version of boho, but there are strong echoes of it. Not least the fact that the brand showed a take on the 2005 Paddington bag, which attracted a cult following with its distinctive chunky padlock.
She also offered a refreshing counterpoint to the idea of the perfect curated wardrobe: “As women, our wardrobe evolves naturally throughout our lives . . . you mix these pieces with uncurated realness.”
Many of the looks were heavily accessorised, but one detail that detracted from the overall effect was the furry shearling charms that resembled tails and looked a bit ratty. Fake fur and shearling have been everywhere this season, and these tail-like shapes were also at Rabanne. I have yet to see a show that is enhanced by fake fur, even at Simone Rocha at London Fashion Week, which was otherwise beautiful.
Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry showcased beaded evening pyjamas and embroidered evening dresses . . . 
. . . alongside looks dominated by cowboy-Western tropes such as oversized gold buckles, leather trousers and gold-tipped ankle boots
It wasn’t only female designers wrestling with what women want now. At Schiaparelli, designer Daniel Roseberry wrote in his show notes that he was “inspired to create a wardrobe that would speak to the contradictions inherent in women’s lives”, and his show riffed on “a tension between masculine and feminine”.
So there were tough, cowboy-Western tropes such as belts with oversized gold buckles, including one in the shape of a horseshoe; leather trousers, some with side lacing; and gold-tipped ankle boots. Alongside these came a trapeze-line coat that could have been worn by Grace Kelly, beaded evening pyjamas and a strapless evening dress in nude georgette embroidered with beads, gold discs and antique silver mirrors. Roseberry is Texan, and regularly features Western details in his clothes, but it was also interesting to see overt Americana on the runways at such a tense point in the country’s history.
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