COMPLETE COLLECTION DETAILS BACKSTAGE/FRONT ROW

PARIS, July 1, 2008

By Sarah Mower

Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy has moved up to the point where he's hitting the tricky balance that couture demands: developing recognizable signatures, on the one hand, and spinning fantasy, on the other. He had a theme for Fall—anticipating the trip to Peru he plans to take in August. That gave him a color scheme, from the tobacco browns of gauchos to the vivid pinks, folkloric alpaca blanket stripes, and patterned knits of Inca culture. To his credit, though, he used those devices to develop more of what his growing audience has learned to love about him: his young, modern, and urban take on chic dressing, punctuated with incisive tailoring and a flair for intense shots of decoration.

The latter came across best in two irregularly tiered, densely fringed dresses in pale pink—updates for all the clients who fell for the feathered dresses in his last couture collection. For day, his tailoring alternated between wide-cut, dark khaki pants with luxe bombers and leather jackets and pin-slim long jackets and fitted vests worn over leggings. Added to that, his floor-grazing, asymmetric jersey dresses with trailing trains and the series of sheer, black Chantilly lace gowns under biker jackets and capes gave the sense of a collection that has a central core. Tisci's Givenchy now has a character and confidence of its own.