HE WAS FRENCH COUTURE
Elegant designer who dressed Audrey Hepburn created global empire
Hubert de Givenchy, who created a global empire and designed Audrey Hepburn’s little black dress in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” has died at 91. Above, the designer at his Paris shop in 1952.
Hubert de Givenchy, the elegant designer who dressed Audrey Hepburn for seven of her movies and once shipped a black dress overnight to Jacqueline Kennedy when she requested it for the funeral of her husband, has died, the fashion house announced Monday. He was 91.
The house of Givenchy paid homage to its founder in a statement, calling him “a major personality of the world of French haute couture and a gentleman who symbolized Parisian chic and elegance for more than half a century.”
“He revolutionized international fashion with the timelessly stylish looks he created for Audrey Hepburn, his great friend and muse for over 40 years,” the house of Givenchy said. “His work remains as relevant today as it was then.”
Clare Waight Keller, who has been at the helm of the brand since last year, said on her official Instagram account that she was “deeply saddened by the loss of a great man and artist I have had the honor to meet.”
“Not only was he one of the most influential fashion figures of our time, whose legacy still influences modern day dressing, but he also was one of the chicest, most charming men I have ever met,” she wrote.
Bernard Arnault, chief executive of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey, which bought the brand in 1988, said he was “deeply saddened” by Givenchy’s death.
“He was among those designers who placed Paris firmly at the heart of world fashion post-1950 while creating a unique personality for his own fashion label,” he said in a statement.
One of the first French fashion designers to create an international empire under his signature, Givenchy had a statuesque physique, perfect grooming and Old World manners. He lent refinement to the roughhouse world of fashion. He could make a courtly bow or the kiss of a woman’s hand seem perfectly natural.
At work in his Paris atelier, “Monsieur,” as his staff addressed him, wore a white lab coat, the French couturier’s uniform. But from the time he opened his business in 1952 he followed his own fashion formula. At the core of a woman’s wardrobe, he placed a sheath dress — a column of subtle curves that became the basic item for many socially prominent women through the 1960s.
Before his business was 10 years old Givenchy had made his mark with dresses that were destined to become icons of their era in part because Audrey Hepburn, Givenchy’s close friend, wore them in her movies. An embroidered white organdy dance dress Hepburn wore in “Sabrina” (1954) and the sleeveless column dress she made famous in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961) became international fashion symbols of Givenchy’s clean, fresh glamour.
“Givenchy was the quintessence of post-World War II French couture,” said fashion historian Valerie Steele, director of the museum at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. “His clothes were very elegant and intended to make women look beautiful. He is best known for his designs of the ’50s and early ’60s for Audrey Hepburn.”
He met Hepburn in 1953 when she visited his Paris atelier to ask about wearing his designs for “Sabrina.” He agreed to meet with her only because he thought the other Hepburn, Katharine, was calling.
“Immediately we had this great sympathy together,” Givenchy told the Los Angeles Times in 1995 of the first time he met Audrey Hepburn. “She was a dancer and she knew perfectly how to walk and move. I remember how beautiful I thought her smile was.” He won an Oscar for costume design for his contributions to “Sabrina.” From then on he designed his collections with Hepburn in mind.
She invited him to Hollywood in 1963 during the filming of “My Fair Lady” to give him a close look at the period-piece costumes that won Cecil Beaton an Academy Award. She referred to Givenchy as “my beautiful Hubert.” He marveled at her devotion, especially as she became more famous. “Her loyalty was fantastic,” he told The Times in 1995. “She helped me tremendously in my work.”
Most of the outfits Hepburn wore on screen were from the ready-to-wear collections sold in a rising number of Givenchy boutiques. By the late 1960s, Givenchy’s label was carried in 10 American retail stores, including Bullocks Wilshire in Los Angeles, where he arrived at the opening in 1969 dressed in a red trench coat over navy blue slacks, shirt and loafers.
Fashion as a look and a lifestyle
In every city where he did business, Givenchy got to know his best customers.
“Givenchy understood the lifestyle of his key customers,” said Rose Marie Bravo, formerly an executive of Saks Fifth Avenue, which carried the Givenchy label. “He observed how they lived and designed clothes that complemented their lives.”
“Monsieur Givenchy knew how to make a woman look beautiful and alluring,” she said. “He exuded class. If he did something a certain way it had instant credibility.”
His social ease made him an effortless pioneer of the “lifestyle” marketing that caught hold in the 1970s. “He was one of the first to develop his image not only by his fashion sense but by his impeccable manners and by the chic he brought to all that he touched,” Bravo said.
His chateau in the Loire Valley, his Paris apartment, his rose gardens and Louis XIV antiques, and the black Labrador retrievers that trotted beside him at home helped sell his image. He invited the media to his home, and they featured him in fullpage color magazine layouts.
“He lived very grandly,” said Jody Donohue, Givenchy’s New York press agent during the 1990s. “He was the first person I ever met who had a separate, summer wardrobe for his furniture. He covered everything in white duck cloth.”
As a designer he had a gift for putting his own touch on other peoples’ best ideas. He made no secret of his debt to his mentor, Cristobal Balenciaga, the Spanish designer who settled in Paris and set trends in the 1950s.
“Givenchy saw Balenciaga as his master,” Steele said. “But while Balenciaga was a profound, artistic designer who could be more extreme in his designs, Givenchy was never as stark or severe.”
Givenchy met Balenciaga soon after he opened his own atelier in 1952. Over the years, a number of Givenchy’s designs were so similar to Balenciaga’s that he was seen by some as a copycat.
Balenciaga didn’t seem to mind. When he closed his couture house in 1968, he escorted several of his best customers to Givenchy’s salon and personally made the introductions.
At an early point in his fashion career Givenchy borrowed from women’s sportswear, an American invention, for his collections. His “separates” — a skirt, blouse and cardigan sweater for day, and a two-piece evening gown — notched up the sophistication level of the American innovation.
His dream from an early age
Born in Beauvais, France, on Feb. 21, 1927, the son of a marquis, Givenchy’s favorite boyhood memories included time spent with his grandfather’s collection of rare textiles. “I’d look at them and touch them for hours,” he told People magazine in January 1996. “I think that is where my vocation began.”
His parents chose law as his profession and Givenchy attended the University of Paris. But at age 17, with a few of his design sketches to show, he visited couture houses in Paris looking for work.
His first call was at the atelier of Balenciaga, already his idol, but he was turned away. He had better luck at the atelier of Jacques Fath, who gave Givenchy his first job in couture. He later worked as an assistant designer for Elsa Schiaparelli. He was 24 when he showed his first solo collection. He had known he wanted to be a designer since age 6.
Three years after he opened his own business, he designed a low-priced sportswear collection for young women. The massproduced sportswear line was produced by a U.S. manufacturer and sold in U.S. department stores. Glamour magazine showed a sweater on its December 1955 cover. “Young chic,” the caption declared. “For when they want to look casual in a worldly way.”
It was his first step toward the licensing agreements with manufacturers that expanded his empire to global reach by the mid-1970s. Givenchy’s signature adorned shoes, belts, sunglasses, purses, a menswear collection and other items. Licensing agreements pushed his annual sales to more than $100 million.
That and a fragrance division that was headed by Givenchy’s only sibling,, Jean Claude, made the designer a multimillionaire.
But just as his business peaked, fashion trends were turning in a new direction. More adventurous designers experimented with lighter construction, more relaxed shapes and new flexible fabrics. Givenchy stayed his course and suffered for it.
Before he sold his business in 1988, he told friends he was losing money. The French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH bought him out, with the rights to his name, for $46 million. He continued for nearly 10 years as the chief designer.
Givenchy’s association with Hepburn kept his name in the news. She presented an Oscar at the 1992 Academy Awards wearing a deep pink Givenchy gown.
In April 1993, several months after Hepburn died of cancer, Givenchy created a small collection of 20 cocktail and evening dresses for Barneys, the New York specialty store, inspired by the “Audrey” look. The collection did well and several more followed.
Los Angeles businesswoman Rosa Nava opened the Givenchy Hotel and Spa in Palm Springs in 1995, modeled on the original Givenchy spa at Versailles, near Paris. She owned the operation and Givenchy sold his name to the project and designed several of the staff uniforms. “I tried to maintain Hubert de Givenchy’s understated elegance,” Nava told The Times in 2003. Two years later she sold the spa and Givenchy’s name was removed.
In 1995, after rumors that the new owners of the Givenchy fashion empire wanted a younger image for the label, British designer John Galliano was hired for the job — a trendsetter half Givenchy’s age.
Givenchy learned the name of his successor when it was announced after one of his last fashion shows. He was shocked, gracious and uncomplaining during the interviews that followed. “You have to know when to stop; that is wisdom,” he told Time magazine in 1996. Privately, he told friends he had been forced out.
At his final sendoff in 1996, he stepped onto the fashion runway to take a bow. Sean Ferrer, Audrey Hepburn’s son, presented him with flowers from the 60 rose bushes Givenchy gave her on her 60th birthday.
After he retired, Givenchy was more outspoken than usual.
“Fashion today is ugly,” he said in an interview with People magazine in January 1996. “There’s no elegance to it. No one is discreet.”
But he said he had no regrets for making a career of it.
“To have lived your dream is very rare in life,” he said. “I have been so fortunate.”