Clare Waight Keller: The Designer who makes the Givenchy heart beat again
Being heard without making noise. That's probably the best way to describe Clare Waight Keller and her presence in the fashion industry. Now she is Givenchy's first female creative director.
There is a difference between making noise and being heard. Probably, in the age of social media that dictates one's existence to be shouted, vomiting it into an endless newsfeed - where you are, who you go with, what you eat, where you go on holiday - the choice to speak only when one has something to say, may seem retro.
Clare Waight Keller, designer of Givenchy, has always let her work speak for her: a work, that of the English creative, which today, twenty years after the beginning of her career, is recognised by Time, which has included her among the 100 most influential people in the world.
English by birth, Clare Waight Keller has always had a passion for fashion and art. After completing her studies at Ravensbourne College of Art, she found himself on the other side of the ocean, in 1990s New York - the inescapable coordinates for a certain nostalgic fashion today - at the most iconic of designers: Calvin Klein. "From a stylistic point of view, minimalism didn't require much effort", he later told the Wall Street Journal, "but at a certain point, the brand became immensely famous, and consequently, commercial, with large numbers: the gap between before and after was so brutal, that it makes it necessary to create an armour, an armour". After Calvin Klein she worked for Ralph Lauren, Pringle of Scotland and Chloé
"I constantly ask myself not only if I like that piece, but if I would wear it. That's why it's sometimes difficult to work with men."
In the style office, when we analyse garments, they sometimes exclaim 'oh, but it's so Chloé. Maybe it's possible, but I don't feel like wearing it'. Finally able to exercise leadership, she does so firmly, never raising her voice. She does not need to.
As if a woman who arrived, perhaps later than others, at the honours due to her, needed the condescension reserved for young talents, who may falter, but some mistakes are allowed. A paternalistic attitude, on which Clare, however, chooses to gloss over, admitting sibilantly that 'yes, it can be difficult to work in a world of men, but the current discourse on feminism is also perhaps a little dated'. The man who founded that maison, however, wants to meet her, invites her to his home in Paris, a butler waiting outside. "He had heard that LVMH wanted to resume couture production, which had been interrupted during the Tisci era, and he was enthusiastic about it. He told me that the heart of his brand lay there'. Hubert de Givenchy died a few months later, but his brand is more alive than ever.
In the public spotlight
What made her hit the headlines, however, was the wedding dress she designed for Meghan Markle, Prince Harry's bride. The astute American thus chooses a designer of English birth, to pay homage to her adopted family, but who is able to imagine a modern woman, who wears dresses with sharp lines, as she likes them. The dress is in silk with three-quarter sleeves and a boat neckline, rigorous, but with a veil on the sides of which are embroidered the flowers symbolising each of the 53 countries of the Commonwealth.
The dialogue between the feminine and the masculine side
To make the feminine side dialogue with the masculine side. A mission she will take on until 2017, the year of his appointment as Givenchy's creative director. He will replace a man, Riccardo Tisci, who, amidst hoodies and sacrilegious patches of Robert Mapplethorpe and basketball trainers, had distanced himself from the femininity designed by Count Hubert de Givenchy, friend, confidante and designer of reference of Audrey Hepburn and Jacqueline Kennedy-poi-Onassis. After the era of backpacks and combat boots by Tisci came Clare and with her the origins of the maison's couture femininity.
Spring Summer 2018
The first show is at the Palais de Justice, imposing marble busts peering down the catwalk: no one had ever had the courage to use that location before, but if Clare managed to make her voice heard above the chatter of the men who wanted to tell her who she was and how she should dress, she certainly doesn't let a pair of busts scare her off. The reception of the first collection, Spring - Summer 2018 is lukewarm, the work she is called upon to do, even with couture, monumental. There are wool tuxedo coats with defined shoulders, a far cry from the soft whispers of Chloé; dresses with ruffles and ruffles return, but they are dyed in a sober black, the prints are optical at best.
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The precision is that of tailoring, but femininity is not affected, but becomes more adult and aware: Clare immerses herself in the archives - a simple and natural exercise, with a maison of that calibre, and one that even her predecessor never did - with the humility of one who wants to learn, again, from the sacred monsters. He studies the volumes, he brings some printed motifs back to the catwalk. There is also the crumpled denim total look with an urban appeal, the soft leather jacket to wear with total black Texans, the red vinyl trench coats, the pleated silk that mischievously peeks out from the side of a tweed skirt.
