A week ago last night, Rachel Weisz wore red latex Givenchy haute couture to the Oscars, where she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Favourite, alongside her costar Emma Stone. Both Favourite actresses lost to If Beale Street Could Talk’s Regina King, but Weisz won the red carpet. Her two-piece vinyl dress got quite a rise out of the Twitterverse.
Anybody expecting more of that light kink on Clare Waight Keller’s runway didn’t get it at tonight’s assured outing. Backstage she described her theme as “the winter of Eden.” Though it wasn’t entirely as serene as that notion suggested, she devoted a good part of the season’s development to a very pretty array of plissé floral-print dresses. These were an elaboration on a group of micro-pleated styles she showed for Spring, but where those were floor-grazing occasion numbers, Fall’s ran the gamut from well above the knee to midi length. Fishing wire gave the hems (and necklines and cuffs) their flirty, wavy shape. Inspired by Japanese vases, the dresses’ fresh colors and painterly patterns were quite winning, and given their pleated poly-silk, which skimmed along the body without clinging, they looked like they’ll be easy to wear. She showed them over sheer black hose and ankle-strap sandals.
Waight Keller’s other work this season revolved around tailoring. In her year and a half at Givenchy, suiting has emerged as her forte, the Duchess of Sussex and Rachel Weisz notwithstanding. Where Waight Keller showed a definitive silhouette at her solo menswear debut in January—a flared trouser suit—here she preferred to experiment with a range of shoulder shapes, including a shrunken ’90s shoulder, a strong ’40s-ish shape, and, most boldly, a sculptural, rounded style with exposed seams that spoke to the audacious forms that tailoring has taken on other key Paris runways this week. In 2019, Givenchy is not the place to go for a suit with slouch. There was a pair of puffer coats—one for men and one for women—and a snap-front acid-washed denim shacket, but they were outliers in what was an essentially formal collection.
After a month spent talking about the rise of glamour, Paris has gone quiet on the subject these last few days. Thanks, maybe, to her couture work and her string of red carpet wins, Waight Keller has a lot to say about after-dark sparkle, which she handled with a good deal of meticulousness. She also played around with volume, topping a double-breasted corset jacket with a deep flounce of crinkled taffeta and a black gown with an exuberantly pouf-sleeved midnight blue bolero in the same demonstrative fabric. There’s potential where those pouf sleeves came from. As Waight Keller rounds her second cycle at Givenchy and begins her third, she should keep exploring that sense of exuberance and freedom.