liberty33r1b
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some reviews
WWD
Style.com
Vogue.com
WWD
Outstanding. Riccardo Tisci staged a show to remember Sunday night, upping his production to theater quality with a major front row and a headlining act. Antony Hegarty, the transgendered English singer known for his hauntingly symphonic voice, could not have been more perfectly chosen to perform during the show, setting the mood of strange beauty that resonated on every level. It was atmospheric, emotional and full of incredible fashion.
The notes rationed out by front of house p.r. described Tisci’s thesis as “the strength of gypsies meets the romanticism of a Victorian feeling.” Gypsies and Victorians are hardly cut from the same cloth, so it was amazing to see Tisci combine the influences in a lyrical way, representative of both yet literal to neither. But before the bounty of gorgeous paisleys and rose prints worked on long sheer skirts interrupted ruffles and lace, there was Bambi.
The collection opened with a direct reference to Tisci’s own body of a work: a black lace sweatshirt, one of his signature motifs, bearing an illustrated likeness of Disney’s favorite deer spliced with what looked like a classical painting. It was cinched with a red braided leather belt with two hooks for clasps and worn over a sheer, rose-printed silk skirt decorated with what looked like old-fashioned wax letter stamps. The weirdly graceful mix of streetwise aggression and classic gentility continued throughout, on molded biker jackets that came in solid black and saturated florals, paired with slim sheer skirts.
Tisci mashed up grungy plaid and rose print on shirts. He trimmed long gypsy skirts in zippers and sliced them up the thigh. Basques that were similar to puffer jackets were affixed around the waists of many looks emphasizing the waist. This reinforced the romantic, womanly nature of the collection without diluting its edge.
A few of the most stunning looks came at the end: boyfriend sweaters, some studded with shiny polka dots, worn over long fluted skirts. Natalia Vodianova was the last exit out. Her legs, taut and toned from a half-marathon run the morning of the show, were visible through the mostly sheer tulle skirt trimmed at the hem in sequined roses — a new and truly daring proposition for evening.
Style.com
Just beautiful. Riccardo Tisci's Givenchy show tonight was one of those fashion moments that true believers slog through four weeks of shows for. It gave you goose bumps. Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons, a longtime friend of the designer's, performed three songs, establishing a mood that was heartfelt and tender. He opened with "You Are My Sister." Tisci, of course, is the youngest of nine children, all the others girls. This collection was the Givenchy frontman at his most personal and romantic, riffing on pieces from his eight-year history at the house, the faint whiff of nostalgia balanced by its fierce nowness.
Swarmed by friends and fans backstage, he said, "I always go to the Givenchy archives. By accident I was in the room with all my stuff, and I found things I did when I was younger that I did here in different ways. It's eight years this season that I've been at the house. I was like a gypsy—you know, gypsies are always recycling old clothes. It was really one of the most fun collections I've done in my career."
Fun for the audience, too, who checked off the references as they came strutting by on striped snakeskin boots. No one is more responsible for fashion's current fixation on the sweatshirt than Tisci; acknowledging the fact, he opened with a new one, its front emblazoned with Bambi, more Disney-cute than his previous prints. A grunge element came through in plaids and leathers, and oversize sweaters got a fair share of his attention, too; one was paired with a sheer tulle ankle-length skirt embroidered with purple and yellow flowers that called to mind the designer's panthers and lilies collection.
As boyish as the sweatshirt is, one of Tisci's big ideas this season put the accent on the feminine. A significant number of the looks were cinched at the waist with Perfectos whose tops had been shorn off—glorified belts, really, that created a provocative, peplumed silhouette. And let us not forget the flowers and paisleys, which bloomed and swirled on butch jackets and sheer femme skirts, in lush contrast to the monastic whites and blues of Spring. The models wore matching bracelets from which dangled big, engraved medals. A fitting accessory for what could very well go down as the show of the season.
Vogue.com
Riccardo Tisci’s sublime Givenchy collection saw him return to the chic street sensibility that characterized his reinvention of the house, as he morphed inspirations taken from Gypsy culture with the classics that he has so suavely appropriated as his own—sweatshirts, biker jackets, and duffle coats among them.
Other designers have been inspired by the spirit and historic clothing of the gitanes before, notably Yves Saint Laurent, John Galliano, Dries Van Noten, and Jean Paul Gaultier, but Tisci has the courage of his convictions and such a powerful aesthetic that he made such overt references as patchworks and tiered and ruffled skirts in make-do-and-mend prints of moody florals and spice-colored paisleys entirely fresh and contemporary by marrying them to menswear elements and investing them with the tough-soft urban edge of which he is now such a proven master.
Tisci opened the show with long sweatshirts with designs that ran the gamut from a saccharine Bambi-esque cartoon deer to thirties portraits of Romany beauties to a menacing shark’s jaw, cinched at the waist over a tube skirt of spangled dark mesh. For romantic modern evenings, those sweatshirts in lace or sheer black chiffon, veiling an image of massed rosebuds beneath, could be worn with insouciant elegance over a pale net skirt appliquéd with cutouts from prints of pansies or blooms. Ruffled skirts and dresses had what resembled chopped-up black leather biker jackets shrugged over the hips to create inventive peplum effects. There was some sleek tailoring amongst the flounces too—lean black pantsuits and dresses fastened with a duffle-coat toggles and killer black velvet pants worn with a nylon bomber. There was a punk edge to the anarchic mix of a man’s lumberjack plaid with fragile and pretty rose motifs and the way the lean biker jackets were over printed with lush florals.
Taking his cue from those vintage portraits of beauties, hairdresser Luigi Murenu turned the models’ heads into caps of tight kiss-curls, like the antique statues of patrician Roman women, in brilliant Bakst colors that were reflected in the ankle boot of the season, with a comma-shaped heel, crafted from horizontal bands of colored snakeskin.
The show (with a front-row lineup that included Jessica Chastain, Ciara, Amanda Seyfried, and Frank Ocean) was set to music provided by Tisci’s great friend Antony Hegarty who, dressed in a black spiral-flounced Givenchy robe, performed several of his chillingly beautiful classics (“You Are My Sister” and “Cripple and the Starfish” among them) to the accompaniment of a full orchestra, enhancing the emotion of a magical and outstandingly beautiful fashion moment.
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