Is This the Suit of the Year?

Creative directors move fast. Following the exit of Clare Waight Keller from Givenchy earlier this year (the British designer had headed up womenswear since 2017, and men's since early 2019), the very fine and very fancy luxury brand needed a new skipper. And they found one, announcing Matthew Williams – he of sexy sci-fi safety harnessed cult label Alyx – in the June of this year. Officially, that gave him less than four months to pull together a collection for one of the biggest, oldest fashion houses in the world. In a crammed fashion landscape. In the middle of a pandemic.

Givenchy

And well done Mr Williams, because you succeeded. The critical masses are glowing. There's going to be a big tick on the line manager's probation form. There's a Givenchy that, impressively, melds the hi-spec couture of its heritage with the appetite for the androgynous left-fieldism of 2020 – all debuted to most of the world via The Internet (and to myself via Instagram stories on a dread-filled Sunday).

"I’m not a person who designs in themes. It’s very much product-focused," the newly-installed creative director told Vogue. "A lot of it is what I would wear personally." And a lot of it is what I would wear personally – especially in the case of one pitch black suit. For despite the wealth of experimentalism at our fingertips, a darkened two-piece is still one of the most effective go-tos in a rotation. You'll always look smart. You'll always feel comfortable. You'll always feel a little bit like a security detail to an ageing Italian heiress.

Which is great! While a black suit can be secured at a reasonable price, the black suit of Williams' Givenchy sits in the perfect, moodiest middle of a Venn diagram. It's boxy, but not overtly so. It's classic, but still modern. It's black, and still manages to stand apart from the anime-like haunted school uniforms we've seen (and loved) elsewhere.

Yes, creative directors move fast. But in the confines of a two-piece we've seen a million times before, they also move imaginatively. My Sunday wasn't so dreadful after all.