GIVENCHY THE FIRST APRIL

Givenchy, whose perfume business is said to be riding high, has tapped a new president and chief executive officer with experience in fashion and beauty, Renaud de Lesquen, currently president and ceo of Dior Americas, is to join Givenchy on April 1 and it is not a Joke.

A suave but discreet executive, de Lesquen has been in the New York-based role for four years, and previously served the same amount of time as president of Dior China. Prior to that, he spent 10 years at L’Oréal in Paris, as president and ceo of YSL Beauté, and before that as global president of Giorgio Armani Beauty.

The appointment suggests Givenchy is about to embark on a new development phase  and also underscores the penchant of parent LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton to groom and promote executives from within.

De Lesquen succeeds Philippe Fortunato, an LVMH veteran whose six-year tenure straddled two distinctly different creative directors: Riccardo Tisci, culminating with an acclaimed New York showing, and then Clare Waight Keller, who arrived from Chloé in 2017. He ramped up retail expansion, brought couture back to the runway, oversaw the brand’s arrival on e-commerce, and also put the spotlight on its men’s wear division with a slate of initiatives, including a showing at Pitti Uomo. Continue reading

GIVENCHY ARSENIC AND OLD BIRD

A clear tent under moonlit trees in the Jardin de Plantes undoubtedly held appeal for Givenchy’s “Winter of Eden”-themed fashion show. But maybe think twice before cramming 1,000 people in a space the length of a city block with only one way out through a dark tunnel of dizzying lights and pounding club beats?

Pick up old British grandma styles, early 90s aristocracy, punkish girls, urban functionality, jewel gowns and shake them all together to see what should come out. Clare Waight Keller at Givenchy did it and the result was not great.

The coats and jackets were powerful with spiky or rounded big shoulders, plissé printed tight poly silk dress, long and cozy knitwear, urban functional puffy down bombers, Japanese herringbone wools, and precious evening garments and tuxedos were balanced and aesthetically catchy.

The smart idea of Waight Keller wasn’t just an over mixed crazy style, but a culture clash between young and old with a lot of differences in term of aesthetics.

PROHIBITED GIVENCHY

The Verdict: Givenchy’s first new fragrance, meant as a Millennial answer “to Very Irrésistible”, failed to fully impress our panel of journalist. While the scent was immediately recognized for its luxurious blend of ingredients or, as canal-luxe said, for smelling “like money” and a few found it “elegant” and “delicate” the general consensus was that L’INTERDIT is a bit of a snooze. Despite the criticism, at least one journalist realized the house of LVMH ambitions with the fragrance, calling it “an ode…to ladies who still lunch;

A boring, fruity floral like so many since the Nineties.” When you spray the perfume, you have an immediate feeling of a very rich fragrance…but then it becomes too heavy. There is a lack of clarity and distinction certainly extremely quality raw materials, but not mixing well together. Continue reading

GIVENCHY FASHION VICTIMS N.Y

GIVENCHYOn 11 September 75 models have presented the Givenchy black and white collection Spring/Summer 2016 with the skyline in the background of the new World Trade Center and paraded to the sound of a Buddhist monk in honor of 911.

Among the true stars who were all on time were invited Julia Roberts, Uma Thurman and Amanda Seygried, the rapper Nicki Minaj, the Alexander Wang, Michael Kors and Vera Wang designers. 800 members of the public had been drawn to attend at the outdoor show as well as over 200 fashion school students.

The guests were seated on wooden pallets sometimes installed in small constructions open on the sky, made of recycled wood and rusty metal sheets, built for the occasion on Pier 26, a huge pier on the Hudson, south of Manhattan. Riccardo Tisci conceived the show in association with the Serbian artist Marina Abramovic. Continue reading

COUPLE OF FASHION

“His are the only clothes in which I am myself. He is far more than a couturier, he is a creator of personality,” Hubert de Givenchy’s muse Audrey Hepburn said of the designer. Loved by some of the most iconic stars of the 20th Century – from Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy and Wallis Simpson, to his most famous muse Audrey Hepburn – Givenchy’s name and legacy have been synonymous with Parisian chic for more than 50 years.

In 1927, he was born Hubert James Taffin de Givenchy. He came from an aristocratic family in the French city of Beauvais. The family’s nobility stemmed from his father’s side from the 18th Century, and artistic professions ran through his mother’s hereditary line.

Givenchy enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He began his career as an apprentice of Jacques Fath in 1945, and continued to learn the art of the couturier over the following years from Robert Piguet, Lucien Lelong and the legendary Italian Continue reading