Hubert de Givenchy: A House Founded on Precision and Ease

Hubert de Givenchy opened his couture house in Paris in 1952, at the age of twenty-four. He was young for a couturier, but he was not inexperienced. Before his first collection he had spent seven years inside four of the most respected houses in Paris, an apprenticeship that explains much of what made his debut distinctive.

Beauvais to Paris

Givenchy was born in February 1927 in Beauvais, in the Oise, into an aristocratic Protestant family. His father died in 1930, and he was brought up by his mother and his maternal grandmother. After the Second World War, still in his late teens, he went to Paris and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Four houses

His professional education began in 1945, when Jacques Fath hired him on the strength of his sketches. According to the Associated Press, he spent two years at Fath learning the fundamentals of the trade. He went on to design for Robert Piguet and for Lucien Lelong, where he worked alongside Pierre Balmain and Christian Dior, and from 1947 to 1951 he worked for Elsa Schiaparelli.

The range of this experience is notable: four houses, each with its own clientele, methods and style, before he set up on his own. The link with Lelong also connects him with Pierre Balmain, whose own house is part of this archive.

The house of 1952

In 1952 Givenchy opened his house in the Plaine Monceau district of Paris. His first collection was built around separates: blouses, tops and skirts that could be combined, rather than the complete head-to-toe ensembles then usual in Paris couture. White cotton blouses, leather tops and high-waisted wool skirts were among the pieces shown. The collection was reported in the American press in March 1952, by Life and by Vogue, which described Givenchy as a "couturier of separates".

Separates allowed a client to combine pieces in different ways, an approach that distinguished the young house from its established neighbours. The leading model Bettina Graziani supported the launch, and her name became attached to the first collection.

Hepburn and Balenciaga

Two relationships shaped the next phase of his career. In 1953 Givenchy met Audrey Hepburn when he dressed her for the film Sabrina. He went on to dress her for nearly a dozen films, including Breakfast at Tiffany's in 1961. The association brought his work an international audience, though it should not obscure the fact that the house's identity had been established before the films.

The second was with Cristóbal Balenciaga, whom Givenchy regarded as his idol and who became his mentor. Their work of the later 1950s shows a shared interest in loosened silhouettes: Givenchy presented a chemise or sack dress in 1957 and a baby-doll dress in 1958, the same years in which Balenciaga introduced comparable forms.

Later history

The house added ready-to-wear as early as 1954, only two years after its foundation. Givenchy sold his house to LVMH in 1988 and retired in 1995. He died in March 2018, at the age of ninety-one. The name continued under a succession of creative directors, among them John Galliano, also a subject of this archive.

Reading early Givenchy

For archival research, the first collections provide a record of the house's original vocabulary. Separates, in particular, raise a question that complete outfits do not: which pieces were sold and worn together. Labels, construction, fabric and provenance can help, and photographs and contemporary reports show how the house itself first combined them.