Haute couture: a Givenchy fashion show in homage to its founder

Paris – Feathers, drapes, capes and the voice of Audrey Hepburn: Givenchy's artistic director, Clare Waight Keller, paid tribute to the founder of the house, who died in March, in his haute couture collection presented Sunday evening.
  

On the first day of the Parisian parades, the show held in the gardens of the National Archives in the Marais was shrouded in Hollywood fantasy and glamor.

The song " Moon River ", performed by Audrey Hepburn, Hubert de Givenchy's muse, in " Diamonds on a sofa " (19459006) Breakfast at Tiffany's ] "), accompanies the models, who advance on a podium shimmering like a river.

Women often look like vestals, in their draped dresses, adorned with voluminous metallic jewels. The feathers dot the collection: they come in touches, forming fringes on a midnight blue velvet cape, but sometimes entirely cover a pale blue dress, a white jacket or a black cape, reminiscent of a 1968 model.

This first collection since the death of Hubert de Givenchy, March 10 at the age of 91, was named " Caraman ", the name of the mansion where the founder of the brand has installed his fashion house and his workshops at 3 avenue George V.

The palette is essentially black and white. The capes are queen, sometimes short, sometimes majestic, sometimes hooded. More singular, a cape of rigid appearance and whose collar conceals the half of the face recalls a model of 1972.

Glitter in the colors of precious stones cover the dresses, sometimes similar to scales of mermaid. Some male silhouettes also sparkle in their sequined coats.

The British designer came to greet accompanied by the team of workshops, in white coats. The Parisian label hit a global spotlight on May 19 with the wedding of Prince Harry with Meghan Markle, whose dress was signed by Clare Waight Keller for Givenchy.

This sleek design with a boat neckline and three-quarter sleeves, accompanied by a five-meter veil embroidered with flowers representing the 53 Commonwealth countries, was the focus of attention from around the world at the religious ceremony in London. Windsor.

– Military Parade "for Clothing –

Sunday was also marked by a parade of Sonia Rykiel consisting of limited edition hand-made pieces. An exceptional approach for this brand of ready-to-wear founded in 1968 by Sonia Rykiel – missing in 2016 – on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the house.

Artistic director Julie de Libran revisited the clbadics of the brand, with knits, black and splinters of color, feathers, sequins and embroidery.

On a different note, the Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia for the ready-to-wear label Vetements evoked the troubled history of his country, and his personal wounds, in a parade with a punk and military aesthetic.

For this spring-summer 2019 collection, the thirty-year-old artistic director of Balenciaga had set up a large wedding banquet under the Paris ring road.

But the wedding had a " dress code " a bit peculiar, made of lattice trousers, ribbons studded with nails, black hoods, large hooded sweatshirts, t-shirts representing targets, and Georgian flags.

This bellicose and rebellious tribe strides on the white tables of the banquet. The creator, who fled the war in his native Abkhazia in the 1990s, explained that it was his most personal collection since the label was created five years ago. .

The parade, which included about forty models from Georgia, is notably " the expression of anger and violence that animated me for many years ," says Demna Gvasalia , who has lived in Ukraine, Germany, Paris and now Zurich. Among the inscriptions on the clothes, figure " one of the worst insults in Russian " is " something that I wanted to tell many people for years "he says.

In total, 35 parades will follow one another until Wednesday evening in Paris.