Givenchy x Riccardo Tisci x Sang Bleu x A Magazine
Sang Bleu magazine’s Maxime Büchi sat down with Riccardo Tisci directly after his Givenchy menswear show for Fall Winter 2010 in Paris, to discuss his inspirations, passions and his perspective on the media (and in particularly his work for A#8). The result is a candid and personal conversation offering genuine insight into Riccardo’s motives and opinions. Many thanks to Maxime, Riccardo, and the team at Givenchy for their support.
Riccardo Tisci showcased the most spectacular and luxurious of Givenchy’s yearly offerings last night, with the Haute Couture Spring Summer 2010 show at the Salon Impérial of The Westin hotel in Paris’s 1st district. With a hushed crowd of press, guests, customers and family and friends of Riccardo, the production was a contemporary vision of the rich history of couture at the house of Givenchy, and a glimpse into the highest echelons of the international fashion market.
In a true whirlwind of vibrant colour and opulent textures, Riccardo sent out twenty three looks in a slow and steady procession, a single walk for each girl through the two chambers and a final group walk to thunderous applause. The collection took cues from the decadence of 1970s disco culture, while maintaining many of the baroque references that have become signature to his aesthetic. Luigi Murenu gave the girls straight and middle parted hair, and Pat McGrath created an intensely hued eyelid of navy glitter shadow with a vermillion lip.
A tightly sculpted trouser suit opened the show paired with frothy ostrich and vulture feathers beneath, and was followed by a procession of sheer layered looks in duchess satin, hand pleated organza, stiff silk gazar or soft lace. Progressing through an elegant palette of nude, black and navy, these first looks rung true to Riccardo’s pedigree – albeit breaking new ground for the lavish embellishment in jet, crystal, and feathers. It was however the final seven looks that stole the show.
As soon as Hanne Gaby Odiele strode out with hands in pockets of a flared jumpsuit entirely covered in blue and black geometric sequins, the following minutes flew past in a kaleidoscope of sapphire, emerald and amethyst shades. Closing the show in a degradé fuschia gown with beige crystal bustier was supermodel Natalia Vodianova, in absence of Riccardo’s muse and close friend Mariacarla Boscono [performing in Rome].
Although a pointed departure from the gothic, bedouin inspired collection of last season, Riccardo has maintained the key codes, techniques and metaphors of his aesthetic – reinterpreted with his emotions of the season, optimism for the times, and a mastery of colour, light, shade and grandeur.
One of the most poignant and truly personal contributions to A Magazine curated by Riccardo Tisci is a letter to Riccardo Tisci from the eternally fabulous and debonair lady, the true fashionista’s fashionista – Anna Piaggi. A veritable style icon, Anna has been a writer and stylist in fashion since the 1960s, working predominantly with Italian Vogue and the defunct Vanity magazine, producing over 7,000 editorial pages in her lifetime. Anna is the muse of milliner Stephen Jones, as well as an avid follower and friend to Manolo Blahnik, Vivienne Westwood and Karl Lagerfeld among many others, and was given an entire exhibition dedicated to her fashion archive, wardrobe and life’s work at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Anna’s wildly colourful personal style has no contenders to its vivacious attitude – with nonsensical clashes of pattern and palette and rich displays of embellishment and texture that render the poutish, petite woman as her very own work of art.
To Riccardo, Anna has written most warm-heartedly, speaking of his own poetry within his designs and the way that he is able to verbalise this in private to her. She likens his puns to ‘ex-votos’, religious votive offerings to Gods and saints that offer thanks, and has included an image of her own symbolic ‘ex-voto’ – an embellished eye on crude leather.
Read her kind words below:
“GIVENCHIC!
Dear Riccardo, the hints you give me after each one of your shows are always a surprise, an amusement, something to remember… a concentrate of the collection in a very few words, quick, light, spontaneous. And always with a very happy accent, a play with words, which I am always looking for. A little miracle each time, like a ‘grazia ricevuta’ (a received grace?), which is the meaning of each religious ex-voto, like the heart embroidered on a black dress in your spring-summer? NO, no, no, autumn winter collection 2008. I love ‘ex-voto’ (ex-votos?) and I have been even using the eye (see photo) as a jewel with a ribbon around my neck, with your beautiful ‘peep’ coat. My favourite quote of yours was ‘maori, fetish, baby doll’ and it stayed in my head for quite a long time. How great to have a bouncing relationship with fashion, to feel it as a pretext for free poetry, nursery rhyme… looking for your, your next collection-expression
As the first installment for 2010, we welcome you to to the world of Italian designer Riccardo Tisci, who is the designer behind Givenchy womens’ and mens’ ready-to-wear and haute couture collections, and curator of A#8 in 2008.
Riccardo Tisci was born in 1974 in Taranto Italy, and the only son among eight daughters. Riccardo studied fashion design at London’s Central St Martins, graduating in 1999. After a stint working for Ruffo Research, he was appointed creative director of Givenchy in 2005, after showing his own self-titled collection in Milan.
YIPPEE ROUND THREE. Our friends from FASHEMATICS.com have done it again, this time on a look from Givenchy Haute Couture FW09 exclusively for A MAGAZINE curated by Riccardo Tisci!
What do you get when you cross:
A blue swimmer crab [Riccardo's favourite?? Or just an ode to his amazonian femme armour??]
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A spiral galaxy [Is this where genius designers come from??]
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Riccardo’s cosmic magic reveals…..
Kasia Struss in shimmering black Givenchy Haute Couture FW09!
The amazing laced leather trousers of Riccardo Tisci’s collection for Givenchy Fall Winter 2009 are one of his most talked about pieces of the season. Here we see them in a whole new light, in a new editorial shoot by London-based photographer Leon Mark, and styled by Naomi Miller.
