As one of the millennial designers currently infiltrating the fashion establishment, Matthew M. Williams fits his generational profile so well. Talking about his first pre-collection for Givenchy, he evaded questions of the specific visual references that may have inspired it, choosing instead to focus on nerdy things like cuts and fabrication. Save your mood boards and sketches for the old guard. “I don’t really work like that, actually. I’m more on the body, touching materials. Sometimes there’ll be imagery that inspires things, but it’s very instinctual,” he said on a video call from Paris, ticking all the boxes.
Williams is emblematic of a new wave of designers for whom fashion is often less about producing the flashy statement piece than about perfecting the unassuming wardrobe staple—of course, with an endlessly-studied twist. If that approach honors the school of Martin Margiela and Helmut Lang, today’s emerging class paints a contrast to those forerunners in an unapologetic focus on themselves as target audience. “What I find exciting is often things I would wear myself,” as Williams said. “As somebody who shops, if I’m buying a suit and I want to wear a t-shirt with the suit instead of a button-up, I want that brand to have a nice t-shirt for me to wear.”
Millennial designers have grown up in the digital age of fashion fandom, spent their twenties saving up for $800 cult-brand hoodies, and learned to obsess about trouser hems. They’re also well-versed in the grammar of icons— whether that’s a varsity jacket or an Hermès, well, anything—and, crucially, in the art of subversion. You could apply all those teachings to Williams’s new collection for Givenchy, which proposed a series of wardrobe staples subverted through his soft-versus-aggressive lens. Let’s illustrate: a classic letterman jacket chopped into a bolero and realized in a super luxe, tonal red knitwear; a rather normal long-sleeved black day dress hacked up at the waist like a little piece of architecture; or businessy blazers with complex lapel and collar structures seemingly morphing in and out the fabric.
“For me, it’s really finding that tension between my real world—how I wear clothes on a daily basis—with this magical dream world of the Maison,” he said. More often than not, that implied a bellicose level of fabric treatment, leatherwork, or embellishment. But next to his rigid materiality, Williams also made a case for the comfort-wear of the post-pandemic shopping landscape. Knitted, slightly figure-hugging dresses continued to outline his womenswear silhouette for Givenchy, while silk leggings and EVA-soled suede sliders represented the elevated sportswear element of the collection. Interestingly, Williams’s take on Givenchy isn’t very sporty at all, something you might expect from a designer his age. “I do wear suits,” he reiterated. “It feels more like me.”
Of course, that’s not to say that a generous amount of logos—another pillar of the social media generation—didn’t find their way into the collection. Williams latticed a lace dress in Givenchy’s archival four-G logo, embossed them on bags—including the new ‘4G Bag’—and forged them in bag chains. “I’m doing the logos through construction and materials as much as possible,” he said, presenting a leather jacket with Givenchy embossed across the lower back as an example. “Sometimes when there’s branding, it’ll be more subtle.”
Those words could have been the tagline for a collection that ultimately showcased a more restrained and clarified take on Williams’s vision for the house. In October, his first social media campaign—in which Kardashians, Jenners, and their likes dressed up and shot themselves in his first collection—reached 500 million people. As the first products under his creative direction hit Givenchy stores this month, we’ll soon see the effect of the brand’s new millennialism on the shop floor.
