The Dressmaker
The newdawn at the French House of Givenchy sees a formidable force un Artistic Director Waight Keller's unified vision - just look beyond the dress By Kenneth Goh. Photography by Claire Rothstein. Styled by Windy Aulia
On May 19, 2018, it took the simplest white gown to announce the arrival of Clare Waight Keller to the world at large. The Artistic Director of Givenchy became a household name the minute she was spotted adjusting Meghan Markle’s wedding dress on the West Steps of St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.The Birmingham-born Brit had worked on the gown for over five months—while the rest of the world speculated which designer would be granted the honour—and finally, on that fateful day, the gown was revealed to a global audience of over 1.9 billion. You could say it was a designer’s ultimate wet dream; a runway show bar none.Waight Keller’s star status was sealed. Flashback to a month before the wedding, to a sakura-strewn room filled with the sweet scent of spring.Waight Keller had taken the #GivenchyWorldTour to Tokyo, and the pièce de résistance was the salon dedicated to 11 creations from her debut couture collection.There, I spoke to Waight Keller about her work at Givenchy since taking over the reins in March 2017, and what it means to be the first female Artistic Director of this 66-year-old French House.
“For me, the main thing coming into this House was to bring a sense of the couple. Because when I arrived, the men’s and women’s businesses were equal. In many houses, the men’s is much, much less; and for me, it was genuinely powerful that both sides were equal. I wanted to bring that back into the brand as the core at the heart of the message.That’s what I’ve been working and building on, which is why you see men’s and women’s every time I do a collection—from pre-collections, to haute couture and ready-to-wear. It’s really about efficiency.”
This no-nonsense attitude seems to prevail over Waight Keller’s reign at Givenchy. Her first couture collection in January was an exercise in strict tailoring and impeccable proportions.The way she layered coats over glittery gowns and paired black jackets with soft diaphanous skirts was a message that the new Givenchy woman can be equal parts strong as well as feminine; a modern-day heroine. For Waight Keller, that meant focusing on one body part in particular:“There’s something ver y powerful about the shoulder. Everything has a strong shoulder.That was something I talked to him (“him” being Hubert de Givenchy, the late founder of the House who passed away earlier this year) about as he believed that everything comes from the shoulder.”
Waight Keller’s approach to couture is confident and self-assured.That debut spring/summer couture collection garnered enormous digital traction, with plenty of mentions at haute couture week. “I think it’s great that people were talking about it! For me, it’s something that’s resonating [with people]. It started with couture because there was a lot of buzz at the couture show. Probably because it was my first one, but also because I did some things differently from what the other couture houses were doing.We had a small, intimate setting; the models walked very slowly through the space.The approach between men’s and women’s created a distinct atmosphere, and it was very impactful on the collection itself. I carried those elements through to the fall/winter 2018 show in March.Again, I created the iconography, the feeling of being in a real atmosphere and absorbing the essence in the collection; all the digital assets that were put out, which were quite deep in the storytelling of the collection, really captured the audience.”