Haute Couture Week: Givenchy and Maison Margiela wow Paris Fashion Week
Givenchy’s Clare Waight Keller and John Galliano at Maison Margiela win praise for haute couture shows in the City of Lights
British designers kicked up a storm at Paris Fashion Week on Wednesday with highly-praised shows from Givenchy’s Clare Waight Keller and John Galliano at Maison Margiela.
Waight Keller made a flawless haute couture debut late on Tuesday with critics swooning over her moonlit sonata in black and white.
And Galliano, who showed his first Margiela men’s collection last week since his fall from grace after a drunken anti-Semitic rant in a Paris bar in 2011, gave his fans something to shout about on Wednesday morning.
Fashion critic Emma Hope Allwood of Dazed and Confused magazine said his eye-poppingly original show, using shot and reflective fabric to catch the flashbulbs, was a triumph.
“Actually almost crying at how good Margiela was,” she tweeted. “What a privilege to witness!”
Italian i-D magazine hailed the return of “a great genius”.
The former Dior supremo showed his clothes under ultraviolet lights to better display their shimmering fluorescence, with silk combined with mirrored Mylar and sportswear fabrics.
These were dresses designed to literally light up the red carpet, with Galliano saying the idea is that they will be “transformed by the flash of a camera to create a new glamour.”