The fitting room at Avenue George V is quieter than you expect
The fitting room at Avenue George V is quieter than you expect. Matthew M. Williams stands beside a half-dressed mannequin, adjusting the fall of a black wool coat that will not, in his view, fall correctly until the interlining is replaced. He does not raise his voice. The coat is remade.
This is Williams's fourth year as artistic director of Givenchy, a tenure that began in June 2020 with all the ceremony of a soft launch and none of the fanfare Riccardo Tisci enjoyed a decade earlier. The appointment surprised some. Williams had spent the previous three years at 1017 ALYX 9SM, the hardware-heavy label he founded in 2015, and before that he was better known as a collaborator than a name above the door—Kanye West, Lady Gaga, the long strange decade when streetwear was still called streetwear and not just fashion.
He did not train at Central Saint Martins. He did not apprentice under a European master. He grew up in Pismo Beach, California, learned to sew from his mother, and moved to New York at seventeen with no formal plan beyond making clothes. For a house founded by Hubert de Givenchy in 1952—a house whose name still conjures Audrey Hepburn in a black sheath and three strands of pearls—the choice felt like a gamble.
The long route in
Williams's formation was lateral. He worked retail at Fred Segal in Los Angeles, then moved into production and design consulting, building relationships with musicians and stylists who needed custom pieces on short notice. By his mid-twenties he was designing for West's tours and collaborating with brands that wanted a streetwear edge without the irony. He understood hardware, technical fabrics, and the mechanics of a garment that had to survive a stage show. When he launched ALYX, the aesthetic was unambiguous: chest rigs, rollercoaster buckles, nylon webbing, a kind of militarised elegance that read as neither nostalgic nor futuristic but present-tense.
The LVMH machine noticed. In 2019, Bernard Arnault's son Alexandre took a minority stake in ALYX. Six months later, Williams was named artistic director of Givenchy womenswear and menswear, replacing Clare Waight Keller, whose departure had been as quiet as her arrival.
The timing was not ideal. Williams's first collection debuted in October 2020, shown digitally to an audience still adjusting to the new grammar of lockdown fashion. The clothes were austere: sharp tailoring in black and white, hardware reduced to functional clasps, a kind of monastic discipline that felt more like a reset than a debut. The press was cautious. Some called it too minimal. Others noted that minimalism, at Givenchy, had never been the problem.
What he kept, what he changed
Givenchy has always been a house of contradictions. Hubert de Givenchy built his reputation on couture restraint—high necklines, clean lines, an aristocratic refusal of ornament—but the house has spent the past two decades cycling through designers who brought their own language and left before it could settle. Julien Macdonald leaned into sex and sequins. Tisci spent twelve years building a gothic universe of Rottweilers and religious iconography. Waight Keller brought a softer hand, royal commissions, and an exit.
Williams's approach has been structural. He kept the atelier teams intact, studied the house archives not for literal references but for construction techniques, and began stripping back the excess that had accumulated under previous regimes. The Antigona bag, a Tisci-era bestseller, was refined but not retired. The G-logo hardware was simplified. Tailoring became sharper, more angular, less apologetic.
He also brought his own vocabulary: utility pockets on evening coats, bondage-inspired straps rendered in silk faille, a recurring motif of exposed zips that felt more surgical than decorative. The spring 2022 collection featured white shirting with exaggerated collars and cuffs, paired with leather trousers cut like second skins. It was austere, yes, but not cold. The clothes had tension.
Critics have noted that Williams's Givenchy feels less like a reinvention and more like a recalibration—a house that had been speaking too loudly learning to modulate its voice. The question, four years in, is whether modulation is enough.
The signature, if there is one
Williams does not use the word 'icon'. He talks instead about function, balance, and the weight of a cloth. In interviews—rare, and usually tied to collection launches—he has said that his goal is not to make clothes that photograph well but clothes that move well, that a woman or man would reach for because the construction makes sense, not because the logo is visible.
This is a difficult pitch in an industry that rewards spectacle. Givenchy does not dominate the conversation the way it did under Tisci, when every runway felt like an event and every front row was a casting call. Williams's shows are quieter, more controlled, and the clothes do not beg for attention. A black wool coat with a single silver clasp. A white shirt with a mandarin collar. Trousers that sit exactly where they should.
The signature, such as it is, might be this: clothes that refuse to perform. They do not reference the past or predict the future. They exist in the present tense, made for people who do not need fashion to announce their arrival.
Whether this is enough to sustain a heritage house in 2025 is another question. Givenchy's revenues have grown under Williams, but not at the pace of Balenciaga or Bottega Veneta, the LVMH and Kering houses that have managed to turn creative direction into cultural momentum. Williams is not a celebrity designer. He does not court controversy or cultivate a persona. He makes clothes, refines them, and moves on.
What comes next
The autumn 2024 collection, shown in March, suggested a slight thaw. There was colour—rust, olive, a deep arterial red—and a looseness in the tailoring that felt less rigid than previous seasons. A leather trench was cut to move, not to stand still. The hardware was still there, but quieter, integrated into seams and hems rather than displayed on the chest.
Williams has said, in one of the few extended interviews he has given, that he is not interested in making a statement every season. He is interested in building a wardrobe. This is a long game, and Givenchy is a house that has survived longer games before.
Whether the industry has the patience for it remains to be seen. But in the fitting room on Avenue George V, the coat now falls correctly. Williams steps back, nods once, and moves to the next piece. There is no ceremony. There is only the work.
