Ever Green: Construction Details of a Givenchy Gown

Of his Spring 1957 collection Givenchy told the Evening Standard it was “like an abstract painting, not easy to decipher”. With dramatic silhouettes featuring swathes of fabric that spiralled up the models like togas, Givenchy’s assessment was fair: it wasn’t easy to determine where these swags of fabrics started and where they stopped. Whether looping over the wearer’s head like an ecclesiastical hood, or around their shoulders and down their back like an elongated snood, these dresses appeared as if a bolt of chiffon had simply been wrapped around the model just moments before they were ushered onto the runway.

And yet with the newest addition to my archive, just one example of these gossamer designs from the spring collection, we can decipher exactly how - through artful draping and ingenious construction techniques - the dresses that perplexed the press were made.