BY DESIGN : The British Are Coming : Galliano as Givenchy’s new king was the big news at the Paris shows. Perhaps, critics say, <i> haute couture</i> should also get an energy infusion.
Designers have long insisted that experimentation and artistic freedom flower best in the $50,000-a-dress world of haute couture. But the most adventurous bit of news to come from the high fashion collections in Paris this week had nothing to do with hemlines, silhouettes or fabrics: It was Tuesday’s announcement that 34-year-old British designer John Galliano will replace Hubert de Givenchy when the legendary 67-year-old designer retires at year’s end.
The naming of Galliano, whose exquisite, bias-cut gowns are nearly couture, ends months of speculation over who would succeed Givenchy at the house he founded in 1952. Galliano’s appointment also suggests that a surge of fresh young energy--and not an unlimited budget--is the antidote to what some say is, increasingly, a lackluster enterprise.
While the Chambre Syndicale, French fashion’s governing body, puts the couture client base at 1,500, the actual number of women who patronize the Paris salons is believed to be closer to 750.
“There will always be people who want exceptional gowns made to measure,” insists Jacques Mouclier, president of the Chambre Syndicale.
No doubt. But Givenchy’s final couture show--dubbed “vintage Givenchy” by critics--was a reminder that the women who had the desire and the means to dress impeccably are part of the past. Among the designer’s most devoted clients were Audrey Hepburn, Jacqueline Kennedy and the Duchess of Windsor.
“I’ve seen the best of it,” Givenchy said in a recent issue of Madame Figaro magazine, “the true moments of haute couture, when models were elegant, and clients both gave us inspiration, and dressed up to go almost anywhere.”
The atmosphere at the show wasn’t quite mournful, but everyone was touched. “It’s very sad,” said U.S. Ambassador to France Pamela Harriman, “though it was a superb collection as usual; I’ve been lucky enough to wear his beautiful clothes since 1960.”
Yves Saint Laurent, who was 17 when Givenchy opened his fashion house, said, “We’ll miss this great talent.”
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One of the criticisms of haute couture is that it no longer determines trends in the less costly ready-to-wear collections; that increasingly it is quite the opposite, causing trend-watchers to look to the pre^t-a-porter collections for hemline and silhouette barometers. Still, Karl Lagerfeld effortlessly hit a directional note at his couture show Tuesday for the House of Chanel.
“It’s all for the body,” Lagerfeld said between TV shoots. “Elongation, slim, weightless looks.”
Those bodies came out in very wearable classic coat dresses, in everything from white with black piping on patch pockets to multicolored, wool piping on lavender in the lightest of boucle wools.
“I want money,” cooed a song near the finale. It’s lucky some have it, for these clothes cost many thousands of dollars.
At the House of Dior on Monday, it seemed designer Gianfranco Ferre hadn’t read in W that snakeskin prints were among the trends the magazine’s staff is sick of (along with “black nail polish, tiny dogs, Dan Rather’s faux humility”). Ferre’s sexy collection featured snakeskin outfits printed with red-black harlequin patterns and lots of uncharacteristically bright colors.
As if Claudia Schiffer needed help looking beautiful, she became even more so in Valentino’s glamorous, feminine collection shown Monday to just the sort of socialites who have the lives to match--Nan Kemper, Susan Guttfreund and Veronica Hearst.
More elaborately feminine frocks turned up in Christian Lacroix’s collection, which looked as if he had traded his own brightly colored pallet for Ferre’s typically monochromatic one. “Noir rime avec espoir [black rhymes with hope],” he announced, and supported the statement with a stream of black velvets, failles, moire, leather and Chantilly lace.
The shows ended Wednesday, and now Galliano--his trademark dreadlocks recently shorn--begins work on his first couture collection for the House of Givenchy. He has till January to meld his romantic, historically rich vision with that of the departed old master.
