Givenchy officially announced Monday it has a new creative director in the form of 30-year-old Italian Riccardo Tisci, who has become the company’s fifth designer since the retirement of founder Hubert de Givenchy in 1995.
According to Marco Gobbetti, chief executive officer of Givenchy, Tisci signed a three-year contract and will move to Paris to begin work immediately on a winter couture collection and pre-spring ready-to-wear.
According to Marco Gobbetti, chief executive officer of Givenchy, Tisci signed a three-year contract and will move to Paris to begin work immediately on a winter couture collection and pre-spring ready-to-wear.
"I am delighted to join Givenchy and very proud to be able to bring my vision to this prestigious French haute couture house, whose history inspires me," said Tisci, who will have to shut down his own label to focus fully on Givenchy.
"It's very difficult. I am Italian and very young. But I have had this big experience from being in England and people look at me in a different way,"
After graduating from London’s Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 1999, the young designer has worked for Puma, Antonio Berardi, Stefano Guerriero, Missoni and Coccapani before signing a three-year contract with Ruffo Research which famously launched the careers of the likes of Raf Simons, Veronique Branquinho and Sophia Kokosalaki.
The house’s announcement ends its prolonged designer search after unhappy experiences with a list of renowned artists like John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Julien Macdonald.
Although the candidates for the vacant position have been said to range from Richard Chai to Zac Posen to Giles Deacon to Roland Mouret to Alber Elbaz but none of them were ready to give up their current jobs, Givenchy boss Marco Gobbetti insisted that Tisci eclipsed all of them.
“He is a perfect fit for us. He has an elegance that is very modern, very contemporary and romantic at the same time,” he told WWD. “A lot of people say, ‘He is very young,’ but I think he’s ready for it.”