Maison ? Mais Oui !

The House of Givenchy finds a home on the Esplanade at Wynn.

Impossible though it may seem, the fashion house that brought us the shirt dress, the bag dress, even the little black dress hasn’t had a boutique this side of the Atlantic for the better part of a decade. To find Riccardo Tisci’s ladylike looks and sartorial shifts you had to make your way to Saks, or Neiman Marcus, or Barneys New York. But now all that has changed. Thanks to a new CEO and a global rollout strategy, the brand that so enamored Audrey Hepburn and Princess Grace—along with more modern muses like Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett—has made a brickand-mortar comeback to the United States. Not in New York or Miami, but in Las Vegas—the city that has arguably become the retail capital of America. “In 2013, Givenchy embarked on an international retail rollout,” says Sebastian Suhl, who took over operations at the fashion house in 2012, moving over from COO at Prada. “Our strategy is highly selective—we will only open our boutiques in the very finest locations in key global cities. And since our clientele is truly international—we have a balanced mix of Asian, American, European, and Middle Eastern buyers—the premium global market of Las Vegas was the logical choice for the launch of Givenchy retail in North America.” An added bonus: Givenchy was granted prime real estate on the Esplanade at Wynn. Truth be told, Suhl’s creative director wouldn’t have accepted a boutique in any other location. Tisci is an eccentric designer with deep ties to the music world (he created the looks for Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet tour and designed the cover for Jay Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne album), and is a man whose inspirations run the gamut from Victorian gothic to Japanese manga. He doesn’t do typical fashion shows; a recent hautecouture season was shown not on a catwalk but in a regal hotel on Paris’s Place Vendôme. Gowns and overcoats were hung from the ceiling rather than on models. Setting for Tisci is everything. Drama is the point. “The Givenchy store at Wynn Las Vegas is an updated version of our Black Box concept,” says Suhl. “It features an imposing entrance made of American white imperial marble with hand-inlaid Tunisian black marble podiums, a marble shoe salon, and a terrace overlooking the lake.” Unlike most shops that encourage big spenders to focus their attention inside the walls, this unexpected space is flooded with natural light from massive windows. “I wanted the design to look as much as possible like an art

“Givenchy has taken the most spectacular space on the property.” — hedy woodrow