Givenchy is celebrating its history on the catwalk with a new coffee-table book, which looks at some of the most beautiful and interesting collections to come out of the house, and also examines the fascinating inspirations behind the work of the creative directors who have taken the helm, from Alexander McQueen and Clare Waight Keller to Matthew M. Williams.
Written by Alexandre Samson and Anders Christian Madsen, this is the most comprehensive catwalk book on Givenchy ever published, and is a must-have for any fan of fashion history.
Scroll on to read an extract from the book, written by Samson, and discover some of the beautiful imagery featured in the tome below. If you want to
buy the book for yourself, head here.
Since its early days, the house of Givenchy has often managed to find a place for its designs not only in the history of fashion but in history overall. In 1961, Blake Edwards’s film Breakfast at Tiffany’s showcased the couturier’s talent for designing black dresses, whether short or long, which were memorably worn by the film’s protagonist Holly Golightly, played by Audrey Hepburn. This feat was repeated on 19 May 2018, when Givenchy became the first French fashion house to have designed a wedding dress for a member of the British royal family. Clare Waight Keller designed the dress worn by Meghan Markle for her wedding to Prince Harry. This exceptional creation, completed in the utmost secrecy at the Givenchy ateliers in Paris, was admired by almost 1.9 billion viewers across the world. Furthermore, few couture houses can claim to have had such a big influence on streetwear. In 1952, the Bettina blouse, as well as the separates, was widely copied; so too the black sweater printed with a snarling Rottweiler head that appeared in 2011, which can still be seen on streets right across the globe.
This book is an opportunity to trace the creative development of the fashion house’s founder and his successors, to explore their early days, their triumphs, their doubts, their innovations. It is also an opportunity to examine the reactions they provoked at the time, and how these are echoed in our own. A total of almost 180 collections testifies to a level of inventiveness and luxury that may well surprise the general public. The heart of Givenchy beats with the pulse of the times, while maintaining a rare balance between commercial propositions and spectacular presentations.
This book has allowed us to cast new light on that history in unexpected ways. Among these surprises, the reader will discover that Hubert de Givenchy was the first couturier whose work was celebrated by a major museum in his lifetime. The exhibition ‘Givenchy: Thirty Years’, which ran from 11 May to 2 October 1982 at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, took place a year before the retrospective dedicated to Yves Saint Laurent at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This little-known fact serves as a reminder that the history of the Givenchy brand is not as well-known as it deserves to be among both the general public and fashion historians. Hubert de Givenchy’s reluctance to enter the media spotlight was most likely a contributing factor to the relative lack of recognition for his work, which the label’s heritage project, launched in 2016, and this book are seeking to redress. The reader will discover a rich and diverse creative legacy spanning seven decades, begun by Hubert de Givenchy and further enriched, since 1995, by the creative visions of six successive designers, including Matthew M. Williams today.
