How do you express “powerful femininity” without resorting to male signifiers like the suit and big shoulders?
This was Sarah Burton’s focus for her sophomore Givenchy show, which saw her bring more of a sexual pulse to the expert tailoring and dressmaking of her dazzling debut via sheer fabrics, peeling and stand-away necklines, short hems, slit skirts and bra tops galore.
She pulled all of this off with remarkable restraint and finesse.
“The world is so noisy,” Burton mused during a preview at her Paris studio earlier in the week. “I like the idea of it being very stripped back still, so there’s a clarity in the way that the woman dresses. It’s not overwhelming her.”
You May Also Like
Even if the British designer has yet to show a Givenchy haute couture collection — it is understood she is still building up her teams — her skill at cutting and crafting new silhouettes was on full display: How she elongated the collar of a white shirt and pitched it forward, opening a vista onto the upper torso of Eva Herzigova, and her wonderful necklace, or how a dead simple midi skirt in lightweight suiting fabric, slashed just so, can be so seductive. Mariacarla Boscono worked it like no one else can.
It’s a testament to Burton’s wizardry, and the dignity that inhabits her clothes, that you always saw the woman first, no matter how skimpy her bra top or how high the slit of her strapless dress. (Although it was hard not to marvel at the ripped abs of Naomi Campbell, who wore a black pantsuit, her blazer open.)
“Women want to feel sexy as well,” Burton said during the preview. “I think they want to embrace their bodies. They want to feel amazing and it’s a powerful thing.”
The designer revisited some silhouettes from her debut collection, which have been influential, softening her hourglass tailoring and letting it nearly slide off the shoulders.
Her knit mesh dresses with fishtail hems for fall were reinterpreted as narrow columns for spring with a big ruff around the bosom, in a supersized tulle fabric known as “Paris net.”
There was a low-key boudoir feel to her short slipdresses in heavy satin, one with a Watteau back, and the finale look on Kaia Gerber: a bra and a narrow, trailing skirt, both in a floral embroidery that gently blushed pink.
In another wonderful sleight of hand, Burton cut a black leather perfecto in the style of a bed jacket, which seemed to hug the bulging babydoll dress in white lace underneath. Powerful femininity, indeed.