A Master Bows Out : Givenchy Helped Make Women Into Style Icons, Fueling the Golden Age of Haute Couture
Every morning for 43 years, a tall, slender man with an aristocratic bearing strode through the Parisian dawn, stopping when he arrived at No. 3, Avenue Georges Cinq. He unlocked the ornate 18th century door and stepped into a haven of civility.
Hubert de Givenchy put on an immaculate white coat, then ran his fingers over bolts of fabric destined to be shaped into flawless dresses, austere but sophisticated creations that would make wealthy women look and feel very beautiful. In the silent workroom, he began to sketch, knowing the singing of the Portuguese workers who swept the atelier would soon intrude on his solitude.
From now on, the door to the House of Givenchy will be opened by someone else. If John Galliano, the wildly talented British showman chosen to succeed Givenchy, is also an early riser, perhaps he will wield the key. Givenchy will keep custody of his memories.
He was at the center of this century’s golden age of couture, a time when no one would have thought to question the fate of haute fashion, as they do today. The legendary women of style whom he clothed and befriended, and the skilled artisans who executed his fantasies, are the focus of his nostalgia.
The showing of the designer’s final collection in October had all the pomp of a state event. When Givenchy joined the models on the runway for a farewell bow, many in the audience of press, customers, loyal staff and fellow designers (including Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Lacroix) wiped away tears as they rose to deliver an ovation. The crowd wasn’t just showing respect for the passing of a master. With the recent revival of the spare, luxe look Givenchy pioneered in the 1950s, his influence on contemporary fashion remains powerful.
In 1988, Givenchy sold his business and the rights to his name to the French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, which also owns the houses of Dior, Lacroix and Celine. Even in retirement, he has been involved in company ventures, visiting Los Angeles recently to promote the Givenchy Hotel and Spa, which will open in Palm Springs next year.
Reflecting on his first visit to Los Angeles, his eyes sparkle. He came as the guest of the original “Sabrina,” Audrey Hepburn. (A remake starring Julia Ormond opens Friday.) They had just collaborated on the costumes for her role in the 1954 romantic comedy. As the oft-told story of their first meeting in Paris goes, Givenchy, having been told that Miss Hepburn wanted to wear his designs in a film, expected to meet Katharine Hepburn. Waiting in his design studio, the young Miss Hepburn would also encounter her second choice; she had hoped that Cristobal Balenciaga, then the reigning couturier, would accept the job. Neither was disappointed.
“Immediately, we had this great sympathy together,” Givenchy says. “She was a dancer, and she knew perfectly how to walk and move. I remember how beautiful I thought her smile was. She was completely adorable that first time we met, and she never changed.”
“Sabrina,” and the way the 22-year-old actress looked in Givenchy’s designs, helped make stars of them both, kindred spirits in perfectionism. After the film’s release, Hepburn telephoned Givenchy. “Now I’m doing ‘Funny Face,’ ” he recalls her saying, “and I need to have some more clothes. Why don’t you come to Los Angeles? We’ll have more time to work together here.”
At night, the pair would dine with Hollywood royalty. The next morning, they would gossip over strong coffee. Hepburn went on to wear Givenchy’s designs in seven movies, and even invited her friend to visit the sets of the period films in which she appeared. “I didn’t do any designs for ‘My Fair Lady,’ ” he recalls. “But she called me and told me to fly over to see the sets and all the costumes of Cecil Beaton.
“It was so exciting. When I visited her, we lived in a wonderful house near Sunset Boulevard. Audrey had to go to the studio early, so we would have breakfast at 5 a.m. She would go off to work and I’d go back to sleep. Then I would join her at 10 in Burbank. She helped me tremendously in my work, and her loyalty was fantastic. I designed things for other actresses, like Elizabeth Taylor, but no one was like Audrey. She really understood everything about how she should look. And we had a basis of friendship and love.”
When Jacqueline Kennedy wanted new clothes for her husband’s first state trip to Paris in 1961, she asked Givenchy to adapt the look Hepburn had popularized: the pillbox hat worn with a sleeveless, boat-neck dress and a straight, boxy coat. “I think all beautiful women have a clean look,” the designer says. “They like things that are simple. People say I am a classic designer. I don’t try to be classic, but I do try to be simple and elegant.”
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Ah, the women Hubert James Taffin de Givenchy has known--the anorexic, fashion-mad heiress Barbara Hutton and the complex, controlling Duchess of Windsor, great supporters of couture from mid-century into the ‘80s. He understood how clothes fed their souls. Ever the diplomat, he knew how to keep their secrets.
He was born to a noble family in Beauvais, north of Paris, where his grandfather, an artist and student of Corot, was curator of the Gobelin tapestry works. At 17, Givenchy came to Paris carrying his sketches and tried to meet Balenciaga. He didn’t get to see the great man, but he did secure a series of jobs at important design houses, first with Jacques Fath, later designing sportswear for Elsa Schiaparelli. When he was 25, he opened his own house with a loan from his brother.
Early on, he realized that having a perfume was a commercial necessity, and he always gave promotion its due. “I couldn’t afford to buy advertising, so I tried to visit as many cities as I could in the States, and get attention from the press.”
Although Givenchy did not choose his successor, Galliano seems to have a similarly savvy approach to business and the press, and to be a rarity among younger designers in appreciating couture’s role as a laboratory for fashion as art. If Galliano can maintain the excitement that has surrounded his astonishing rise, perhaps the House of Givenchy will produce couture as well as ready-to-wear for years to come. Givenchy is not sure.
He remembers when Balenciaga, who had become a friend and mentor, explained the inevitability of couture’s decline. “He was a very wise man,” Givenchy says.
In 1968, “He told me that he was going to close his business. I was very young at the time, and he said that I didn’t realize how much the lives of his customers had changed. They used to buy 12 suits each season, six cocktail dresses, four coats, 10 evening dresses. They would sail on the Normandy from the United States to Europe and would take many large trunks of clothing with them. But when everyone began to travel by plane, they didn’t need the kind of wardrobes they used to. Everyone wanted everything to go faster. Women didn’t have time to go to fittings anymore.”
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The age of manners, with its appreciation of couture’s fine craftsmanship, was supplanted by the culture of rebellion, which celebrated the crudely sexy fashion of the street. It wasn’t difficult for Givenchy to adapt to a younger, less formal customer. He had always loved what he called separates, and before he could afford fine materials, he used inexpensive men’s shirting fabric for everything from blouses to evening dresses.
“I had the most marvelous time during the most beautiful period of fashion,” he says. “Every evening there was a wonderful party or ball somewhere. Women understood that it was as important to have style and allure as beauty. The most wonderful couturiers were working in Paris--Balenciaga, of course, and Christian Dior and Madame Gres. But I had to adapt myself for each epoch. My role was not to stay with what was in style 30 years ago, but to follow the lives that women were leading and to give them the clothes they wanted for it.”
Givenchy thinks of retirement as a new stage of freedom. For the first time in many years, he does not have to answer to fashion’s relentless calendar, producing six collections a year. There is some sweet irony in the fact that just as he exits the scene, the iconic women whose images he helped forge hover over the world of fashion like glamorous revenants. They are gone, and there are things he wants to do now--to study Italian, to have more time for the gardens at his country home, a magnificent 17th century chateau near Chartres.
“I wanted to be a dress designer from the time I was 6 years old,” Givenchy says. “To have a big, handsome building in the nice area of Paris, with my name on it, that was part of my dream. To have lived your dream is very rare in life. I am a very happy man. I have been so fortunate.”
