Givenchy’s Pre-Fall 2018 Campaign Is Whiter Than NYC Snowstorm

PARIS — Givenchy‘s Pre-Fall 2018 Ad Campaign is here and it’s whiter than New York City‘s snowstorm.

Last January 2017, DM Fashion Book reported that after six years, creative director Clare Waight Keller was exiting Chloé, which is owned by Compagnie Financière Richemont. The British designer made her exit after showing the brand’s Fall/Winter 2017 collection in the City of Lights during Paris Fashion Week on March 2 (see it here).

Waight Keller, an alum of Pringle of Scotland and Gucci, joined Chloé in 2011 and was hired by CEO Geoffroy De La Bourdonnaye. She rejuvenated the house’s ready-to-wear and accessories business and winning largely positive reviews for her collections. Waight Keller followed in the footsteps of Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo, who all designed for Chloé.

Waight Keller served as senior women’s designer at Gucci during the time Tom Ford was creative director, and has also worked at Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. She spent six years at Pringle before moving to Paris to helm Chloé, where she succeeded Hannah MacGibbon.

This past March 2017, we confirmed Givenchy (owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE) named Waight Keller as its new artistic director, responsible for women’s and men’s wear, accessories and couture. She will be the first woman to run the creative side of the house founded by Hubert de Givenchy in 1952 (see it here).

Over the past summer (July 2017)  Waight Keller released her first ad campaign for the house (see it here). Today, (December 8), her second campaign for Givenchy was released.

The house’s Pre-Fall 2018 advertisement features NO models of color. In fact, it’s whiter than the current New York City snowstorm. According to her, she calls this ad, “A portrait of the new Givenchy family.” The Pre-Fall collection takes cues from urban influences, but it still doesn’t feature one Black model. Urban is a city/town where mostly Black people live or a culture started in the inner cities / ghettos. Designers copy off our culture all the time, and then you don’t see a lot of people that look anything like us in ad campaigns, on billboards, working at magazines and fashion houses, or sitting in the front row at shows.

Waight Keller on the campaign:  “The girl that you want to be, she’s chic, intellectual, with a very confident style… the boy is a free spirit, playful,” the designer said.

For the collection’s lookbook, Theo Sion shot a gang of Givenchy-clad models in a country manor in Kent. The video feature the models hanging around the location playing cards, reading books and hanging around on the grounds looking chic.

Photos Credit: Thei Sion