“It’s continuing that dialogue between the Parisian codes of the house and my version of Americana, which is heavily influenced by California and New York.” So said Matthew M. Williams (middle name Michael) of this continent- and culture-spanning womenswear and menswear pre-fall collection for Givenchy.
Unlike many other heritage Paris houses, Givenchy’s source codes have been largely overlooked since 2005 or so, when one of Williams’s predecessors first began his tour of duty. So last season’s pivot to consider the proper, hyper-defined and ultra-feminine cuts of his house’s patrician founder—full name Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy—felt surprisingly new and looked refreshingly unexpected.
Williams, until now a dedicated seer of that contemporary, has since continued his conversation with that which came before. He said: “I spent some time with his family and they were showing me some of his old sketches, actually from when he was at Schiaparelli before he started his own brand. He was so creative.And it’s just so interesting to see how early a lot of the design codes that formed his design language were created. It’s very cool.”
Images givenchyfamily.com/fall2023.