Down to business.

Givenchy:  Resort 2012

 

Despite the monochrome color palette and voluminous, brooding silhouettes Riccardo Tisci introduced into the maison Givenchy company profile some five years ago, you can’t exactly say the man has ever maintained a consistently beige sensibility.  When you cut the fat of the subtextural marriage between Tisci’s love of psycho-goth and fondness for a stringent religiosity, Givenchy’s practicality usually outshines the given season’s creative gimmick.  These house staples are often delivered un-attached from Tisci’s heavy handed design techniques and present themselves (not exactly in the Michael Kors notion of everyday American sportswear) in commercially successful ways that cater to the core Givenchy clientele.  His structured, fine tailored business suiting has strong sportif elements and Tisci’s underlying silhouette, patiently waiting underneath the piled-on fluff, is a viable wardrobe of everyday basics.  Fall-Winter 2011-12’s heavy handed proposition of dizzying trompe l’oeil embroidery and menacing digi-print viscose of panthers and pansies suggested a foray into understanding the duality Givenchy now represents in the international fashion market.  Its company profile is an aggressive, primal force amongst its sartorial peers.  At first glance it appeared to espouse a vulgar, over-produced exercise in competitive dressing and a very typical show statement on suggesting sex.  It even at times clung to a seemingly self-important campaign to boast house iconography.  And its epileptic frenzy of graphic laser printed bomber jackets and crinoline inset dresses?  Not exactly for the faint of heart.  But then the trajectory of the collection revealed a satisfyingly minimal narrative with a coherent, intelligent offering of viable separates.  Resort-2012 seeks to retain that same end—pairing intricately embellished psychedelic pattern against the most elegant of aerodynamic sportswear.  But because I am biased and boring, I will fully subscribe to the notion that what made the collection were the two head-to-toe black looks that seconded as actual swimsuits.  I don’t know about you, but the sensory overload of Tisci’s unapologetic use of animalier has me hankering for a dose of good old Givenchy archive unfussiness.