Riccardo Tisci is sitting at a table in the parquet-floored showrooms of Givenchy in Paris, contemplating his upcoming 10-year anniversary. “It seems like yesterday,” says the designer, a swarthy 40-year-old who is today sporting a slight peppering of stubble and short, cropped hair.
Emotionally, maybe, but times have changed. In 2005, Givenchy was on the verge of bankruptcy, and the atelier reeling from successive design appointments that had seen John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Julien Macdonald enter and exit the building within years of each other. “I had to cross the street to use the public photocopier because there wasn’t a working one in the Givenchy studio. We didn’t have the money.”
No one expected much then of LVMH’s signing, a streetwise Italian in jeans and sneakers who had studied at Central St Martins in London and staged only two collections under his own label, in Milan. “They called me ‘goth’,” says Tisci, speaking quickly in a strongly accented English that is nuanced with Londonisms and regularly defers to people as “baby”.