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-pin-cushion 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. Lured from McQueen by the legendary French house 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 in the Givenchy archives, and the show, a fresh take on Givenchy’s classically trim, pulled-together looks, met with critical success.

Naturally, the March 7 show was mobbed by the great and the good, among them, Captain Phasma herself, the purposeful Gwendolyn Christie, whose splendid long black glove on her trigger hand seems like it might still look very natural wrapped around the stock of that fancy ray-gun she wielded with such force and accuracy in Star Wars. She’s a deadeye shot, that Captain Phasma. The long blonde waves look camera-ready for a Hitchcock flick. Watch out.

Rooney Mara, pictured below, also stuck to the letter of the all-black-for-daytime-in-the-big-city rule.

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 the leg, which is to say, those heels would 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/Ghanian mother and a Yorkshire-born father, Raye grew up singing alongside her mother at church in the aptly-named Tooting district of South London. Effortless style: 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 a very rich dark green. 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, 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 let’s see: it’s just the left hand that’s strategically up the sleeve. Surely that flight-prone Italian/American boyfriend of hers couldn’t be getting serious about settling down. Man is too much of a grasshopper to do anything like putting a ring on somebody.