Clare Waight-Keller's Givenchy is The Pinnacle of New Urban Luxury

Having settled into her role as creative director for Givenchy - taking the reigns from Ricardo Tisci after a 12-year tenure - Clare Waight Keller turns up the volume for AW18. Stepping away from the French Maison's signature palette of stars and stripes, Waight Keller opts to reinvigorate Givenchy's classic 4Gs logo, applying this longstanding and storied brand insignia across a range of menswear staples designed to suit the luxury lifestyle. Capitalising on her outsider status, Waight Keller brings a British grit to the Parisian label - delivering a masterful synthesis of classicism and streetwear to suit the times we live in.

Quoted in Vogue, Waight Keller signposted her plans to develop the Givenchy menswear offering to appeal to a broader base and with the recent announcement that she plans to return to male-only shows for AW19, it's clear that menswear has emerged as an area of strategic and creative importance for the label.

As evidenced by the combination of sporting and casual tailoring in this collection, Givenchy has switched gears to deliver output which catches the attention of generation-streetwear. Yachting-styles and other sporting references are combined with the fresh interpretation of sartorialism introduced during the reign of her predecessor, Ricardo Tisci, to create a fresh identity for the Givenchy man in 2018.

This incorporation of streetwear elements in the output of nearly every iconic French house is testimony to just how narrow the gap between high fashion and streetwear has become in the age of Yeezy and Off-White, and in light of this new direction, who better to lead the charge than Waight Keller whose youth was spent on the streets of Birmingham; experiencing first hand the culture and aesthetics which inform streetwear's point of view.

While it's still early days in Waight Keller's time at Givenchy - a natural symbiosis of the DNA of the house and Waight Keller's personal design perspective has shone through. In the age of the multi-hyphenate - and at a time where our appetite for newness in fashion has never been more insatiable - Waight Keller's background as a stylist has proved invaluable, providing the essential insight needed to know not only how to design, but how to combine pieces to communicate a vision. And ultimately sell clothes that people want to wear.

Givenchy AW18 is now available to shop at END.