PARIS — The Givenchy invitation arrived with a knotted black leather kerchief, a highly suggestive item which was complemented by the set of the show, a shadowy film noir hall of mirrors, and a first look which presented a woman in a dark suit and white shirt, dressed for Raymond Chandler’s mean streets. So far, so noir. Then came the second look, a simple black velvet sheath slashed high on the thigh, the model sporting what looked like a wimple, except that it was actually hatter Stephen Jones’s suggestion of a holidaymaker’s ordinary cotton T-shirt worn on the head to keep the sun at bay. It was a recurrent motif throughout the collection, and its incongruent connection of the casual everyday to the casually glamorous, combined in a strikingly cinematic way, felt like Sarah Burton finding her way to her own Givenchy signature.
Pick a theme for the season so far and hard, defiant glamour is as good as any, from Gucci and Tom Ford to Schiaparelli. To be sure, Burton’s collection had an edge but she doesn’t do hard. Defiance, on the other hand, she’s had a lifetime of experience with. “Memories and history inform the future,” she said backstage. There was a gleeful sense of that in her use of animal print. A strapless leopard print dress, hiked on the thigh, was purest Roxy Music pop. It was followed, seconds later, by a fringed, bugle-beaded, glam rock dissection, seconds after that, by socialite sophistication in the form of a serious leopard print coat, next, a cheeky bandeau paired with baggy, low-slung pants and, finally, another coat that looked like an exploding lynx. All styles served here, as Roxy’s Bryan Ferry once sang. Burton has never felt so playful.
An ear to the ground in the minutes following the show suggested that the audience had been most seduced by Burton’s tailoring. Her broad-shouldered trouser suits in classic men’s fabrics, occasionally draped in a big boss coat, were undeniably convincing. “How do we put ourselves back together in the world we live in?” she wondered. A confident, conventional projection of power seemed like one obvious route. But I’ll remember the red velvet bias cut apron draped over black pants, or the poppy-strewn column with the piano shawl fringing. Beauty is still fashion’s stock in trade, but it needs defiance in the face of the world Sarah Burton was talking about. Promisingly, that is the kind of fashion she was grown to make.
