GIVENCHY

Givenchy

Once upon a time the world´s great fashion designers formed an extremelly closed circle of nimbled fingered, white-coated craftsmen. Season after season in theirs talior´s workshops they redefined Parisian fashion and worldwide freinds. Hubert de Givenchywas one of them.

Born in 1927, at the age of seventeen Hubert James Taffin Givenchy left his birthplace in Beauvais for Paris, at a time when the coutourier business was still passed from master to apprentice. He learned from Fath, Robert Piguet, Lucien Lelong(recommended by Christian Dior) an in Elsa Schiaparelli´s famous salons on Place Vendome.

Foreseeing relaxed chic and the democratisation of luxury, which together marked the end of the century, in 1952 Givenchy launched „separates“. Light skirts and puff-sleeved blouses made from raw cotton – previously reserved for fittings only.

Best dressed women in the world were keen part of it – Lauren Bacall, Babe Paley. Great Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlène Dietrich, Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis, Princess Grace od Monaco and Wallis Simpson, for whom the designer created special covers, to preserve the Duchess´s envied orders from prying eyes. They were made in windsor blue.