January 24, 2018 |
Well, we started the Givenchy couture show in tears. “a flower knows, when its butterfly will return, and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand; but now it hurts, to watch you leave so soon, when I don’t know, if you will ever come back,” read the quote by Sanober Khan. Tapping into our emotional instability. But then the show began and we were wiping those tears away and inspecting Clare Waight Keller’s first couture show. She delivered.
This was Givenchy at night, an enigmatic garden. Mysteries D’un Jardin De Nuit. It was that moment in the pitch blackness of the night when the moon surfaces, the intense lunar white under all that darkness. The staccato violins brought suspense, as the modern woman’s couture flowed into the room. Moments of almost casual couture, youthful escapism contrasted with the opulent workmanship of the atelier. Silvery threads of light in the night, moths, fire flies attracted to the garden, with the ‘moonlight’ streaming through the casement windows. Colour seeped in with red edging on the back of a golden pink gown, colours moving, midnight blues bleeding into lush green to sweet pea pink.
There were tiny nods to the quintessential Hubert de Givenchy in the Hepburn-esque strapless gown, perhaps a little bit of Alexander McQueen in the undercurrent and a sense of Riccardo’s tailored lean darkness. But Clare herself, of course, in the ever-so-slightly bohemian rainbow gowns felt like the future. Free spirited, yet with a new found rigour. This was most definitely Clare in her Givenchy element. Anyway, the garden was blooming, still with all that mystery because what we don’t give away is much more intriguing. The quiet beauty of not knowing, the off moments in life. You know it’s good when we’re getting philosophical.
Photographs by Jason Lloyd-Evans
