Final note
URBAN-WEAR MEETS urbane at the house of Givenchy in 2021 where American designer Matthew M. Williams, who cut his teeth via his own streetwear label, debuted this season. The dark note beneath the designer’s predominately black melody is in harmony with the after-eight distillation of French chic that the house defined.
When a French arts student, the son of the marquis de Givenchy, established his haute couture label in 1952 in post-war Paris, he did so against the odds. He concocted a unique brand of simplicity and feminine elegance that lured silver-screen starlets (Audrey Hepburn) and First Ladies (Jacqueline Kennedy) alike with silhouettes that were at once romantic, refined and grandiose for casual and evening.
Now, the Givenchy codes continue: rigorous tailoring and a particular affinity with black.
This bag, the Cut-Out, has striking geometry that taps Williams’s streetwear roots. Hardware is his comfort zone and he’s reinvented it with a 3-D ‘G’ chain.
The original Givenchy heart? That came through in a lock motif on his jewellery inspired by the love padlocks tourists affixed to Paris’s Pont Des Arts. Succeeding John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Riccardo Tisci and Clare Waight Keller, Williams is tapping a highoctane vein of glamour that has been Givenchy’s modern calling card. His stewardship returns capital F fashion – carrying forth the chain.