Riccardo Tisci has had three bites of the cherry in showing and telling the story of his Spring couture collection. First, he presented these 13 extraordinarily beautiful dresses in motion, tagged onto the end of his Fall menswear show in Paris. Then, during the couture days, he exhibited them on suspended dummies at Givenchy’s headquarters, so that viewers could eyeball every sequin, and marvel at the peach embroidery of rooster, heron, and ostrich feather on a single transparent dress. And then lastly, he released the lookbook pictures you see here.
Well, they did deserve their close-ups, confirming that the red checked dress with a high ruffled neck, a deep back, and 3-D sequins—the one with an overtly pioneer look about it—really is the best. The backstory behind the whole thing was revealing. Tisci had pulled late-19th-century portraits of Native American women wearing Victorian dresses off the Internet. He stressed he didn’t want to directly appropriate their cultures or to offend, but that’s where his eye was drawn: the stimulus that started the collection.
