What awaits Givenchy under the creative direction of Sarah Burton?

With the appointment of Sarah Burton as creative director of Givenchy, one of the fashion world's latest mysteries has been solved. Burton's appointment, which was announced on Monday, makes her the eighth person to take the helm of the French fashion house. Her appointment comes at a time when both LVMH and Kering have been criticised for their lack of female creative directors at the helm of major luxury fashion houses. From this perspective, her announcement may be considered a step forward, but there are several signs that her future vision may be rooted in the fashion house's past.

As her debut for the brand is not lined until March next year, FashionUnited has taken the time to speculate on what Givenchy's future might look like and why Burton is right for the job.

Parallels, brand DNA and dark romance

For nostalgics, Burton's move to Givenchy is a final ode to her mentor, Alexander McQueen. The late designer himself was the creative director at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001. In many ways, Burton's move seems to be the only conceivable path for the designer, who has spent most of her career firmly linked to the man who hired her as an intern in 1996. In fact, Burton was originally employed full-time at the McQueen label, while the founder split his time between the two houses.

Her appointment decades after McQueen is far less controversial than that of her mentor in his day, when he took on the prestigious position of artistic director at only 27 and pushed the boundaries of what a couture house could be. The reception at the time was lukewarm at best, and yet McQueen and his 18 collections have since shaped not only the history of Givenchy, but also that of fashion – and some of Burton's collections.

One of the most significant differences between Burton and her mentor, who once told French newspaper Le Figaro that he had ‘no respect’ for Givenchy founder Hubert de Givenchy and only took the job because he loved fashion, is that Burton has both the respect needed to honour a house and its history and the talent to lead it into the future.

In the statement accompanying her announcement, the designer said she was thrilled to be able to write the next chapter in the history of this iconic house and bring her own vision, sensibility and conviction to Givenchy, before describing the French house as a ‘jewel’.

However, in purely chronological terms, Burton does not succeed Alexander McQueen, but Matthew Williams, who headed the house for three years before leaving last January. The appointment of Williams and his subsequent revamp of Givenchy was strongly orientated towards a younger audience, mainly Gen Z, which he had previously attracted with his brand Alyx 9SM.

His appointment was in some ways reminiscent of perhaps the most famous period in the brand's history, when Riccardo Tisci brought the brand into the age of social media, streetwear, and hype, from 2005 to 2017. Even if Williams vision didn't ultimately catch on like Tisci did.

When Tisci joined Givenchy back in the day, the brand struggled after being helmed by a series of creative directors in a very short space of time — a situation very similar to the current one. In 2011, a few years after Tisici took over, Marco Gobbetti, then Givenchy's chief executive, said in an interview with the Financial Times that the brand was ‘a mess without an identity’. Tisici succeeded in sorting out the ‘mess’ and injected the brand with a new lease of life. A task that will now fall to Burton.

However, the parallels between Tisci and Burton are not only to be found in the shape of the house at the time of their appointments. Their artistic parallels may not be immediately obvious, at least not if you look at the Rottweiler-printed hoodies and sweatpants that the Italian introduced to Givenchy in his day.

However, if one focuses on his couture performances, it is noticeable that their sensibilities, a dark romanticism that sometimes draws on religious iconography and a subversion of traditional beauty, overlap.

The women at the helm of Givenchy

Burton and her sole female predecessor, Clare Waight Keller, also share not only a gender but a talent for creating a dialogue between the traditionally feminine and masculine on the catwalk. Waight Keller may have steered the brand back to a more mature audience that Givenchy was not yet ready for at the time, but she also gave the brand a sense of magical realism — although much of her inspiration came from the Hubert de Givenchy archive.

This is also true of Burton's McQueen, where over the years she has both developed the symbols once dictated by Alexander McQueen and made them her own. She is by no means a realist, a dreamlike quality has always haunted her creations and yet over the years, with a growing focus on wearable fashion, she has also gradually moved away from the once central theme of storytelling.

However, it will be interesting to see where the focus will lie when the designer unveils her vision for Givenchy, although it will most likely combine tradition and avant-garde in one way or another.

Ultimately, Sarah Burton is no stranger to the weight of a legacy, of which there is plenty at Givenchy. While it remains to be seen how exactly she will embrace it, one thing is already abundantly clear: the brand has opted for tailoring, craftsmanship and vision rather than another attempt to hop on the hype-train.