Riccardo Tisci presented his new show en plein air in the Jardin des Plantes under a canopy of globe lights. It was a year ago that he took Givenchy to a Hudson River pier in New York on a gorgeous summer night, but here in Paris there was a bite in the air. The crowd wrapped themselves in the silver Mylar blankets provided on each seat.
We were outside again, he said afterward, because he’s been thinking about nature and sensuality. “Women are fighting for power, not only in America, but everywhere in the world,” he said. “So I wanted to do something more sensual and more powerful, and for me, that’s tied to nature.” Enter the trio of agate-print slip dresses layered over long tanks that started the show. They keyed the fiery color palette—red, orange, brown, and pink. But before Tisci really got into that, he sent out another trio, this one consisting of black pantsuits with silver zip details and the patch pockets seen in his June menswear. The models wore them shirtless, with giant agate pendants suspended from tortoiseshell chains.
Back and forth it went between fitted, but not severe, dresses and sleek pantsuits. The dresses came in solid neutrals and solid brights, as well as flirty polka dots and stripes. Kendall Jenner wore an LBD printed with mandalas, a motif Tisci touched on last season; only here he did it in a lower key. All the color and print notwithstanding, this was a more subdued outing than Fall. As for the tailoring, it didn’t stray far from the template Tisci laid out with those first three suits, although he did venture a brown one with swingy flared pants and a glam series at the end embroidered with shards of colored crystal arranged in flowerlike patterns. No fashion conventions were broken here, nor did Tisci push his own personal design vocabulary too far, but this collection will keep the Givenchy customer in coquettish frocks and boss suits for the near future.
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