Portrait : le directeur artistique de Givenchy

The fitting room at Givenchy's Avenue George V atelier runs narrow and tall, the kind of space that makes you stand up straight without thinking about it. Matthew M. Williams works quickly. He adjusts a jacket sleeve, steps back, adjusts it again. The garment is black, structured through the shoulder, soft through the body. He doesn't explain what he's doing. His hands do the talking.

Williams came to Givenchy in June 2020, in the middle of a pandemic and at the end of a decade in which the house had cycled through three creative directors. He was not the expected choice. He had no formal training in Paris ateliers, no apprenticeship under a European master. What he had was a cult following in Los Angeles, a collaboration history with Kanye West, and a streetwear label called 1017 ALYX 9SM that turned industrial hardware into luxury. Vogue called the appointment "a gamble." Williams called it an opportunity to build something that felt honest.

The California Route

Williams grew up in Pismo Beach, a small coastal town halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. He studied graphic design, not fashion, and his early work leaned into music and art direction. By his mid-twenties he was designing for Lady Gaga. By his early thirties he was consulting for Kanye West's Yeezy line and helping to shape what streetwear could look like when it stopped trying to be ironic.

In 2015 he launched ALYX. The brand's signature was a rollercoaster buckle—a chunky, industrial clasp borrowed from amusement park safety harnesses. It became the kind of detail people recognised across a room. The clothes themselves were clean, technical, and expensive. They didn't apologise for being any of those things. ALYX wasn't trying to be Raf Simons or Helmut Lang. It was trying to be ALYX, and that was enough.

By 2019, LVMH had taken a minority stake in the brand. A year later, Williams was named artistic director of Givenchy.

The Hubert Question

Every designer who takes the helm at Givenchy inherits the same question: what do you do with Hubert? Hubert de Givenchy founded the house in 1952, dressed Audrey Hepburn, and spent four decades building a reputation for restraint and elegance. His work was about proportion, not decoration. It was about knowing when to stop.

Williams has said, in various interviews, that he respects the archive but doesn't live in it. His first collection for the house, shown in October 2020, opened with a black coat dress and closed with a leather jacket. In between: tailoring with exaggerated shoulders, eveningwear cut like sportswear, hardware that looked borrowed from a climbing harness. The press called it "utilitarian luxury." Williams called it clothes he would actually wear.

The tension is real. Givenchy's haute couture clients expect a certain kind of refinement. The younger customers Williams brought with him from ALYX expect something harder, more direct. The trick is not to split the difference but to find a third position that doesn't pander to either.

Signature and System

If Williams has a signature at Givenchy, it's in the construction. He builds garments the way an engineer builds a bridge—start with the load-bearing elements, then add everything else. A blazer gets its structure from the shoulder and chest, not from padding. A dress gets its shape from the cut, not from boning. The hardware is there because it works, not because it signals anything.

His second and third collections refined the approach. The tailoring got sharper. The eveningwear got softer. The ALYX buckle appeared occasionally, but not on everything. By his fourth show, in March 2022, the vocabulary was clear: sharp shoulders, clean lines, black and white with occasional punches of red or blue, and a consistent return to the idea that luxury doesn't need to announce itself.

The atelier has adapted. Givenchy's petites mains—the seamstresses and pattern cutters who have worked in the house for decades—initially struggled with Williams's technical approach. He wanted seams in places where seams don't traditionally go. He wanted fabrics to behave in ways they weren't designed to. But the atelier is built to solve problems, and after a few seasons, the two sides found a rhythm.

What Sells

Givenchy's bestsellers under Williams are not the runway pieces. They're the bags. The Antigona, relaunched in softer leather with updated hardware, has been a consistent performer. The G-Hobo, introduced in 2022, sold out in three colourways within two months. The bags are recognisable without being loud, expensive without feeling prohibitive, and they work with both a suit and a pair of jeans. That balance is harder to strike than it looks.

The menswear has also found traction, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. Williams's tailoring skews younger than traditional Givenchy—higher armholes, narrower trousers, shorter jackets—but it still reads as formal. A 24-year-old in Seoul can wear the same suit as a 45-year-old in Paris, and both will look correct.

The challenge is haute couture. Givenchy still produces couture collections twice a year, and Williams has approached them with caution. His couture is quieter than his ready-to-wear, more focused on drape and volume than on hardware or structure. The clients have responded, but slowly. Couture takes time.

What Comes Next

Williams has been at Givenchy for nearly five years. That's longer than Riccardo Tisci's first five years, and longer than Clare Waight Keller's entire tenure. The question now isn't whether he'll stay—it's what the house looks like if he does.

The next chapter appears to involve more collaboration. Williams has brought in artists, photographers, and musicians to work on campaigns and installations. He's opened the archive to younger designers and students. He's talked, in interviews, about wanting Givenchy to feel less like a monument and more like a studio—a place where things get made, not just preserved.

Whether that vision holds depends on sales, and sales depend on more than good tailoring. They depend on bags that move, on fragrances that connect, on a brand image that works in Shanghai and Los Angeles and Paris simultaneously. Williams understands that. He came from streetwear, where survival is month to month, not season to season.

The fitting room is still narrow. The work is still quick. The jacket, when he's finished, sits exactly where it should.