The fashion house and the artist collaborate on custom store mannequins which will be featured in selected retail environments.
Givenchy recently announced that Creative Director Matthew M. Williams’ collection for the fall/winter 2021 season will launch in selected stores alongside an original collaboration with acclaimed multimedia artist Ewan Macfarlane.
Echoing Williams’ experimentation with classicism and radical contrast as well as utility and luxury, installations of humanoid sculptures created by Macfarlane for Givenchy show figures crouching, climbing, reaching or leaning, clad in clothes and accessories from the the brand’s fall/winter 2021 collection. Through their attitudes, these pieces evoke an innate quest for self-expression, meaning and evolution – human poetic desires that are shaped and conveyed by the objects we choose to make our own.
“I’ve long admired Ewan’s work, and these sculptures really speak to me because my process as a designer is always about finding the humanity in luxury,” says Williams. “I’m always looking at the reality of the person who will bring the clothing to life: it should feel powerful and effortless, equal and joyful. What someone wears should always portray who they are inside. I feel like the beauty of Ewan’s work help me convey that in a powerful and poetic way.”
Macfarlane expresses: “It’s an honor to have been invited by Matthew M. Williams and commissioned by Givenchy to work on this project. Whether hanging, reaching, or contorting, these compositions represent an ongoing conversation about contemplation and self-discovery … what is perennial and what is seasonal. It’s a meditation on form, craft, opulence and celebrating life.”
Various modes of display, such as pedestals, chairs, ladders, or metal tension poles polished to a high shine, and disassociated limbs present Givenchy looks and accessories for men and women at various sightlines, expanding the vertical horizon and sparking a dialog between the fall/winter 2021 collection, the space it inhabits and the viewer.
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