Sarah Burton’s Long-Awaited Debut At Givenchy

Heady, hands-on and surgically glamorous with her cuts, acclaimed British designer Sarah Burton, pictured above peeking out with her trademark giant wrist-pincushion for her traditional post-show wave at her former house, Alexander McQueen, delivered her first collection for Givenchy at the house’s stately Paris HQ on March 7. Announced as the new designer by Givenchy last September, Burton, who earned an Order Of The British Empire (OBE) for services to fashion from Queen Elizabeth, has clearly been hard at work ranging through the formidable, almost cinematic archives of the venerable house.

Her fresh take on Givenchy’s classically trim, pulled-together luxe looks has met with critical success. Think: maison-founder Hubert de Givenchy’s dear and effortlessly glamorous friend and 1950s-1960s muse, Audrey Hepburn, updated for the spanking-new Age of Uncertainty now, as seen in the 21st century. Not that Hepburn or de Givenchy, both children of their continent’s biggest and baddest 20th-century war, had an easy time of it clambering through and out of WWII.

Put another way, exactly as de Givenchy and Hepburn steadily drew enormous international acclaim for their respective works, there is a swift, reassuring energy to Sarah Burton’s obvious talent. She’s in it for the long haul, and she has a jolly, unfussy way of inviting her increasingly passionate public along for the ride. Everybody’s loving that.

Naturally, the March 7 show was mobbed by the great and the good, among them, Captain Phasma herself, the riveting Gwendolyn Christie, whose splendid long black glove on her trigger hand seems like it might still look quite natural wrapped around the stock of that super-fancy ray-gun she wielded with such force and accuracy in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. She’s a deadeye shot, that Captain Phasma. Well cast, Star Wars bosses! Bring her back, darn it! At Givenchy, minus the black body armor in those films, the long blonde tresses look camera-ready for any dastardly-deed-filled Hitchcock flick that you’d care to name. Watch out.

Rooney Mara, pictured below, also stuck to the letter of the all-black-for-daytime-in-the-big-city rule, but the edgy indie/bigtime actress, raised in Westchester’s own star-studded Bedford, New York, bears surprisingly deep good-ol’ American football DNA. Her maternal great-grandfather, Art Rooney, Sr., was the founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and her paternal great-grandfather, Tim Mara, was the founder of the New York Giants. Her father, Timothy Christopher Mara, is the Giants’ current senior VP for player personnel. Double-barreled NFL royalty, then! No wonder she plays such engagingly tough characters on screen. Lady can slice through a defense like nobody’s business.

Pictured below, Italian fashion editor and writer and sharp dresser Anna Della Russo took the all-black memo in a different, more officers’ mess-jacket/killer-matador direction that, though witty, doesn’t seem to have been done to amuse anybody. This is more about inspiring awe with the leg. Which is to say, those heels could clatter crisply down the gangway of this or that Russian oligarch’s not-as-yet-impounded superyacht off Bodrum.

Top British artist-of-the-year for 2024, R&B/jazz powerhouse singer-songwriter Raye, aka Rachel Keen, pictured below, kept to the all-black memo as well, but she brought a thoroughly flashy, springlike energy to the show, sans wrap, with that killer red belt. Daughter of a Swiss/Ghanaian mother and a Yorkshire-born father, Raye grew up singing alongside her mother at church in South London’s aptly-named Tooting district. Effortless style is what this look is about: Just throw on that dress and get out there and mix it up. Coat? Who needs a coat? This Billoard-topping singer, co-writer of Beyonce’s “Riiverdance” on the Cowboy Carter album, is on fire.

Is Vittoria Ceretti’s amazing floor-length leather coat black? Looks so, but it could just be an extremely rich dark green out of the last century. Never mind: The effect, especially with the bag, is black, which is to say, the off-duty model, sans boyfriend-of-the-moment, has been to and walked in enough shows by now so that she needs no memo to wear black. She can pick up the vibe from the show telepathically, in advance.

It can be the graceful off-duty lean against the door, or the slight drop in the left shoulder, or her general air of bemusement, but La Ceretti’s coat sleeves do seem as if they could use a little bit of a raise. It’s fair to say she didn’t lose a hand in a threshing accident. Still, looks odd, right, big bag just hanging there? But hold on a sec: It’s the left hand that’s strategically up the sleeve. No way that that free-range American boyfriend of hers could be getting serious about settling down. Man is just too much of a hummingbird even to get within a hundred yards of the thought to put a ring on anybody.