Paris Fashion Week: Givenchy SS22 went hard on Matthew M Williams’ austere, utilitarian vision of luxury

For Matthew M. Williams’ first live Givenchy show his collaboration with Josh Smith resulted in a subversive streetwear-inflected collection intended to shake up the storied fashion house
1/15
Chloe Street4 October 2021

When Hubert de Givenchy established a working relationship with the gamine Audrey Hepburn, his eponymous brand became one of the first maisons known for what we now call celebrity dressing.

In his first live show for the house since he took the reins in June 2020, American designer Matthew M. Williams continued that tradition, albeit with a focus on Gen Z rappers and actors like Offset, Tyga and Tommy Dorfman, all of whom sat front row in the giant hangar-like Paris La Défense Arena, a stadium in business district Nanterre in North West Paris.

Set to an original score from Atlanta-born rapper Young Thug – with unreleased music from his upcoming album PUNK – the show revealed an SS22 collection created in partnership with American artist Josh Smith (a hookup that came via Williams’s girlfriend Marlene Zwirner, of the David Zwirner Gallery), an artist who first found fame in the early 2000s with a series of canvases depicting his own name. Smith’s Grim Reaper paintings found new life on leather pieces, while his demonic skeleton pumpkins became basketball-like handbags.

AFP via Getty Images

“I wanted to build on the tradition of Givenchy’s history while also really looking towards the future,” said Williams, whose SS22 offering experimented more overtly with his austere, subversive streetwear aesthetic than it did any deference to the 70-year-old brand’s history; the only perceptible nod to which came via ruffled peplums, inspired by a sketch of Hubert de Givenchy.

Getty Images

Prince of Wales check oversized tailoring, raw-edged fishing vests, leather baseball caps, utilitarian shirting and neon high-arched sneakers contrasted with softer, airier pieces like Broderie Anglaise hot-pants and sculpted tulle minis. Crotch-skimming leather clog boots paired with flicking wavey-edged mini skirts, and trouser-cum-mini skirt hybrids with slashes at the top of the leg celebrated the upper thigh as a new erogenous zone.

Getty Images

Models were uniformly thin and stony-faced with heavy black eyeliner. The collection was visually balanced, but felt lacking in some of the romance, inclusivity and levity that many of us have come to crave from fashion post-pandemic.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in