‘Meghan wasn’t nervous at all. She was radiant, serene and utterly stunning’

easy for herself. ‘Minimalism is really hard to do in white. You can’t hide a thing.’

The scrupulous lack of embellishment meant Meghan’s wedding dress became an exercise in proportions – ‘how it sat on the shoulders, where it hit the wrists. That 2cm gap at the hem so that you could just see the shoes. I wanted it to seem as if she was floating.’ The neckline was adapted from the Sabrina – invented by Hubert for Hepburn when she starred in the 1954 film of the same name – but with an update at the front, which Waight Keller cut straight across ‘to make it look more modern’.

Her other triumph, in addition to how touchingly simple and exquisitely refined the dress looked on the day, was that she had managed to keep it a secret right to the end. Partly that was because Waight Keller, who’d moved back to the UK with her family in 2016 for the twins’ education, was doing all the fittings herself in London. Remember, she’s a dab hand at pinning.

‘At the last fitting Meghan said she was truly thrilled. ‘The dress went backwards and forwards to Paris to be worked on in the atelier, but no one in the team knew who it was for, because after the couture show in January, a number of high-profile The grand Hausmann flat has gone (traded in for the Cornish farmhouse that she calls her ‘palate cleanser’), and Waight Keller now stays in hotels in Paris. ‘Not the George V,’ she clarifies, even though the five-star accommodation would be handy for Givenchy’s HQ. ‘Givenchy doesn’t have those kinds of budgets.’ Besides, she says, she likes staying in different hotels and discovering new areas.

Behind that polite, easy accessibility, she must be ruthlessly focused. How else, in such a short time, could she have broadened Givenchy’s appeal so that it’s no longer only talking to a narrow cohort of Kardashian and Katy Perry fans? For spring/ summer 2019, she has moved on from the archives, introducing an elegant quasi-utilitarian aesthetic – lightweight tailored jackets that tuck into high-waisted trousers to be worn round the clock, with those mid-height cone heels. It’s her answer, she explains, to athleisure, of which she really isn’t a fan. It’s functional elegance with a hefty dose of chic pragmatism: in other words, quintessential Waight Keller.

Givenchy – New Bond Street Flagship, 165 New Bond Street, London W1S 4AY