Givenchy

A Designer Succession in the 1990s and 2000s

The decades after the founder's retirement read as a sequence of distinct appointments. Hubert de Givenchy retired in 1995, John Galliano succeeded him for a short tenure, and Alexander McQueen replaced Galliano. In 2001, designer Julien McDonald was appointed Artistic Director for the women's lines, while in 2003 Ozwald Boateng was appointed the designer for the men's range. The reigns for both haute couture and women's ready-to-wear were ultimately passed on to Riccardo Tisci in 2005, when he was named chief designer of womenswear. That pattern — separate leadership for women's and men's lines before a single womenswear chief — shows a house working through how to divide creative direction across couture, women's ready-to-wear and menswear at the same time.

Riccardo Tisci and a New Reading of the House

Tisci is a graduate of London's Central Saint Martin's Academy, whose fellow alumni named here include Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo of Chloe. His work for Givenchy is described through two contrasting registers: an apparent fascination with gothic touches — dark, languid dresses for fall couture — and space-age minimalism, in a ready-to-wear show featuring white-clad models drifting around a sterile-white sphere. Reviews and output were mixed and inconsistent, but influential fashion critics such as Cathy Horyn of the New York Times and Suzy Menkes of the International Herald Tribune honed in on Tisci's conceptual leanings, and on his future potential for revitalizing the Givenchy brand and infusing it with his precision and imagination. The interest, in other words, was as much in the ideas behind the clothes as in any single collection.

Patronage, Membership and Scale

Givenchy's public identity rests heavily on who wore it. Audrey Hepburn is named as the brand's most famous patron, in films such as How to Steal a Million and Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Kennedy family famously wore Givenchy clothes to the funeral of J.F.K. Institutionally, Givenchy is a member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture et du Pret-a-Porter, the body associated with Paris haute couture. Like Dior, the company is owned by the European luxury goods giant LVMH. In 1993, Givenchy achieved total sales worth of $176 million, making it the second largest apparel division of LVMH after Dior — a measure of how a couture name founded on a designer's own hand had become a substantial division inside a luxury group, spanning clothing, accessories, perfumes and cosmetics.