Sarah Burton’s first Givenchy menswear collection starts with a pretty good idea: don’t reinvent the wardrobe. Mess with it.
The suit is still here. So is the white shirt, the bomber, the leather jacket, the track jacket, the work coat and the evening jacket. But Burton gives all of them a little more room to move.
That turns out to be the fun of it.
There is something immediately appealing about a collection that understands the pleasure of getting dressed. Burton’s Givenchy man can be sharply tailored, slightly louche, sporty, dressed up or somewhere in between. The clothes don’t seem to demand a particular personality. They leave some room for one.
Tailoring comes first. Prince of Wales checks and pinstripes arrive in broad, confident proportions, with double-breasted jackets and generous trousers that feel polished without being stiff. Then things start to shift. Jackets are opened up, proportions stretch, and familiar pieces begin to look a little less familiar.
The white shirt gets the same treatment. The bomber gets embroidered. Leather moves from jacket to rugby shirt to workwear. And then, suddenly, there is a track suit in brilliant color that looks less like something you wore to the gym and more like something you might actually want to wear out.
This is where Burton is at her best: taking something ordinary and giving it just enough of a twist.
Color is a big part of the fun. Against the quieter tailoring, saturated yellow, red and blue appear almost like punctuation marks. A bright yellow satin car coat is particularly hard to ignore — part sportswear, part eveningwear, part very good reason to wear something other than black.
There are plenty of details to discover, too. Embroidery, unexpected fabrics, flashes of leather and pieces that seem to have wandered in from completely different parts of the wardrobe somehow make sense together.
Rather than creating one new Givenchy uniform, Burton gives us a wardrobe with options. The sharp suit. The great leather jacket. The oversized shirt. The colorful sportswear. The evening piece you actually want to wear. There is a looseness to the way they coexist.
The collection was presented inside the Givenchy headquarters in Paris, with the rooms transformed into a kind of house within a house. It was a fitting setting for a collection interested in the things we live with and wear again and again — the pieces that eventually become part of who we are.
Burton has also chosen interesting people to inhabit this wardrobe. The campaign features photographer Sir Don McCullin, filmmaker and DJ Don Letts and painter Danny Fox, photographed by Juergen Teller. They don’t feel like interchangeable fashion faces. They look like people who have actually lived in their clothes.
That makes the collection feel more personal. Less “this is what a Givenchy man should look like” and more “here are some very good clothes — see what you can do with them.”
And there are some very good clothes here.
The tailoring has presence. The leather has attitude. The color wakes everything up. The sportswear is playful without becoming silly, and the evening pieces bring back a bit of old-fashioned glamour without feeling remotely old-fashioned.
For her first Givenchy menswear collection, Burton seems less interested in making a grand announcement than in opening the doors and letting the wardrobe breathe.
Suit? Sure.
Leather? Absolutely.
Something bright yellow? Why not.
It’s Givenchy, loosened up.
