October 9, 2018 |
Looking back at the fabulous season of shows that’s just behind us, a new sense of androgyny definitely took over Paris. Yes, the conversation about gender-characteristics within clothes has been going on for a while, but it now seemed that even the major fashion houses chimed in. One of those was Givenchy fronted by its artistic director Clare Waight Keller who looked at the style of Annemarie Schwarzenbach, a beginning-of-century writer and journalist who represented a different conversation about gender at the time. She wasn’t identifying as a female or a male, she considered herself non-binary, even before that word entered the dictionary. Waight Keller’s interpretation of Schwarzenbach and her masculine style came through a set of short-haired models, sporting tom-boyish tailoring along with feminine, pleated dresses. It was a beautiful homage and a great contribution to this much-needed conversation.
Titled I Am Your Mirror, Givenchy now released a short film exploring the duality in the designs of Clare Waight Keller presented in Paris. Captured behind the curtains of the show, the video blurs the lines and questions our ways of looking at clothes. Is it women’s? Is it men’s? Do we still really care?
