GIVENCHY S / S 2010 (Advertising).

MODELS: SIMON NESSMAN, NATALIA VODIANOVA, EMIL DOSTOVIC, MARIACARLA BOCONO AND EDUARDO CALERO.

MODELS: EDUARDO CALERO, NATALIA VODIANOVA, EMIL DOSTOVIC AND SIMON NESSMAN.

MODELS: MARIACARLA BOSCONO, EMIL DOSTOVIC, NATALIA VODIANOVA AND SIMON NESSMAN.

PHOTOGRAPHER: Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott

Givenchy Fall 2009 Couture.

Antonella Graef (WOMEN)

Whether he's designing ready-to-wear or couture, Riccardo Tisci veers between strict-chic and otherworldly, goddesslike creatures called up from imagined lands.

Ranya Mordanova (WOMEN)

This season, ideas about Morocco, Berber tribespeople, and equestrianism informed both narratives—not that the collection read in any literal ethnographic way.

Stasya Izyumova (WOMEN)

It began with fiercely tailored, padded-shouldered coats molded into the waist and over the hips in black velvet or patinated strips of leather—the riding element—and then moved on into sarouel-influenced pants, hoods, veiled and draped silhouettes, and gold embroidery with a Middle Eastern influence.

Leticia Alterbernd (METROPOLITAN)

It had drama, too: Karlie Kloss in a long white veil over an ivory patent-leather corset and cream pants, walking like some sort of science-fantasy princess.

Kendra Spears (ELITE)

It doesn't particularly matter any more in couture if a theme doesn't completely hold up to scrutiny.

Ana Carolina Reis (METROPOLITAN)

What counts are the other tests that apply to custom-made clothes: the specialness of each individual outfit and the relevance of the clothes to what a fashion-conscious woman might want to wear.

Lara Stone (IMG)

It's on those points that Tisci's work at Givenchy makes its impact. The coats and a standout black velvet jacket over draped, tile-patterned gold embroidered pants have a hip, luxe contemporary desirability.

Lakshmi Menon (NATHALIE)

Ditto some of the eveningwear, like a slick, high-necked, long-sleeved black pailletted gown, and—when stripped of the fluoro jeweling—the things he does with draped nude chiffon.

Kasia Struss (WOMEN)

If Tisci's thought process sometimes lacks coherence, he is still a designer bringing a much-needed sense of modernity to an old tradition.

Iris Strubegger (WOMEN)

Danielle Zinaich (IMG)

Kamila Filipcikova (IMG)

Katlin Aas (MARILYN)

Abbey Lee (NEXT)

Karlie Kloss (NEXT)

Karolin Wolter (WOMEN)

Ana Claudia Michels (WOMEN)

Magdalena Frackowiak (ELITE)

Karmen Pedaru (NEXT)

Natasha Poly (WOMEN)

Mariacarla Boscono (VIVA)

Riccardo Tisci

Givenchy Spring 2010 Men´s.

Jamil

Michael Jackson found out about Riccardo Tisci through the pieces of Givenchy's womenswear he'd been wearing, and that's how Tisci came to be working on costumes for Jackson's engagement at the O2 Centre in London.

Armand O

The potential collaboration inspired the gold-star-studded pieces the designer showed in Givenchy’s new menswear collection.


He was due to meet his new client for the first time on Monday.

Keith Hernandez

Then Destiny intervened—meaning those pieces may eventually be Elvis-like holy relics.

Steffen Weng

But they were scarcely the high points in a presentation that saw Tisci finally coordinating ambition and reality.

Edward

Put simply, he loosened up—mostly.


After the show, the designer claimed his retail success with his leggings and Bermudas (the mosh-pit couture that defined his first two menswear collections for Givenchy) had given him the confidence to try something more elegant, hence the occasionally overwrought tailoring in the show, including trousers with a built-in cummerbund and a silk-lapelled suit.

Henry Watkins

But with Tisci insisting his theme was "Latino Boy Goes to Morocco" (his Latino boy is always going somewhere), the real heart of the collection was surely in the North African-inflected, layered activewear.


It gelled very effectively with the shorts-over-leggings silhouette he's been offering for the past two seasons (which seems to have been adopted for Spring 2010 by a flying wedge of his peers), and gave the clothes a ferociously sexy athleticism, helped along by a model casting that ranged far and wide across the globe.


Using high-performance fabrics in a mosaiclike print founded on the star motif, Tisci came up with his own version of a sports uniform.


The gladiator footwear suggested something arena-based.

Dominique Hollington

Ariel Seitler

Abiah Hostvedt

Jesus Luz

Henry Watkins

Keith Hernandez

Adam Refoufi

Jamil

Junior

Dominique Hollington