Dissecting Givenchy SS15: an installation by artist Paul Veroude mirrored both Tisci’s sartorial precision and the hybrid nature of his street-wear-come-military collection

The Givenchy Men’s Ready-to-Wear SS15 show proved to be a feat of precision engineering – and that’s just the staging. The catwalk circled a spectacular installation by artist Paul Veroude: a 1967 French aeroplane painted black and dismantled, with each individual part suspended from the ceiling. The effect was that of a plane having exploded a fraction of a second earlier, before being frozen in a state of suspended animation.  Designer Riccardo Tisci appears to have aligned his design philosophy with that of Veroude, whose creative vision celebrates the power of machinery through artistic deconstruction. The three-dimensional exploded diagram boldly mirrored both Tisci’s sartorial precision and the hybrid nature of the rebel designer’s smart street-wear-come-military collection.

In commissioning ‘exploded plane’, the house defined the collection – that saw skullcaps and beaded detailing; linear monochrome suits and floral prints ‘disguised’ as camouflage – in terms of a dual masculinity both fiercely traditional and innovatively feminine in parts.

Words: Florence Trott