Nice Clothes, Boring Debut: Sarah Burton's First Collection at Givenchy
View Sarah Burton's debut with Givenchy FW25 here
Sarah Burton’s debut at Givenchy felt like an exhale after holding your breath for thirteen straight years. The collection references Hubert de Givenchy’s vision of womenswear, which was an emphasis on comfortable elegance, a signature that many of his customers heralded. Womenswear the way women want it. While I can’t say for sure if Burton’s collection gives the same physical comfort as I am not a woman, nor do I have the chance to even feel the clothes in person, visually, Burton is providing a massive sense of ease and old-school elegance in a Givenchy way, but it also feels like she was finally set free.
While it seemed Burton had no problem emulating Monsieur de Givenchy’s vision, her hard work at McQueen definitely felt the opposite. I am not suggesting that Burton was struggling, but McQueen was too formidable a figure to even attempt to copy, let alone continue his twisted genius after his passing. Burton did a better job than anyone expected, but in hindsight and in contrast, after her debut collection at a house that had multiple successes before her, which gave breathing room for Givenchy’s legacy to stand a little less immediately intimidating, Burton’s first collection emitted a long-awaited liberation.
However, if we look past the aura that shrouds the collection, it appears to be quite boring. In the press release, in Sarah Burton’s words, “to go forward, you have to go back to the beginning. To me, that’s about the atelier, it’s the heart and soul of Givenchy.” Why do creative directors always feel the need to reference the brand’s founding history and the founding history only for their debut collection? Of course, I am not ignorant of the fact that Burton is trying to plant her own flag in Givenchy’s history and to tell people that she gets it, she understands the house codes, and through her sartorial interpretation, she will continue Givenchy’s original sentiment. I would have done the same, but that would not be my only source, as referencing the original and the original only is a move done by many, many others. On one hand, you're paying an expected homage to the storied house, but on the other hand, you are erasing what other designers have done at Givenchy that shaped what the brand stands for in a contemporary sense. This unnecessarily extreme move of new creative directors has inadvertently made, in this case, referencing the ‘Givenchy way’ boring, highly expected, and unnecessarily safe.
A really important nuance here is that at some brands you are forced to only reference the start or the starting brand vision, and these are brands where the original designer, likely the founder, have recently stepped down or deceased, and the company hired a new designer to continue their vision, for the former we have Tom Ford, Jean Paul Gaultier, Helmut Lang or Martin Margiela; for the latter we have brands like Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen. It’s not long since they stepped down, and the brand does not have the time yet to evolve into something bigger or maybe different. In Givenchy’s case, a brand that has gone through seven different designers since Hubert de Givenchy’s departure, each injecting their own DNA into Givenchy, reimagining the traditional French house, the ‘what would Givenchy do?’ sort of sentiment and help the brand remain relevant in contemporary sense, it’s seems quite foolish to only acknowledge the very start which, one can argue, is not the best representation anymore.
However, I am also aware that it will be extremely inappropriate and weird to spotlight any other designer’s work other than Hubert de Givenchy’s work, as other designers are ‘ex-employees.’ The clothes are exactly what Burton set out to achieve, she did an amazing job at meeting expectations, but perhaps an amalgamation of all versions of Givenchy, with a little more emphasis on what the brand has evolved to contemporarily, an evolved image, especially the golden era of Tisci and Williams’ questionable yet adventurous push of image to unexpected territories, would be more interesting.
Once again, Burton’s intention behind is apparent, it’s logical, but this becomes highly restricting and in the current fashion world where we are looking for freshness to wake up a quite boring scene, resorting to the most obvious move isn’t the best in my opinion.