The four-months pregnant Nicole Richie was spotted out-and-about with boyfriend Joel Madden as they made their way to get brunch in Los Angeles. Her new bag, which she chose for the occasion to hide her baby bump, was the Givenchy Nightingale Purse.

After his awkward debut during couture week, Welsh designer Julien Macdonald is still struggling to find his feet.
The house of Givenchy has always been known for its purity of line and simplicity of design—the polar opposite of Macdonald’s heavy-handed use of ruching, cord inlays and cabled trims. While some pieces were finely made—notably a striking off-white poplin dancer skirt with layered crinolines and a pink marbleized dip-dye shirt—they got lost in an overabundance of decoration. Macdonald’s high-waist pegged trousers, too sheer smocked dresses and fussy riding jackets all felt contrived.
Ultimately, this collection fell short of forging the new identity that Givenchy seeks.

Julien Macdonald has been handed the mandate to carve out a distinct, but commercially-viable identity for the house of Givenchy. For fall—his second collection as creative director— Macdonald brought in a few of the design ideas currently making the rounds. Patchwork, handkerchief-point chiffon dresses, biker jackets and the somewhat exhausted Casbah look all made an appearance.
Macdonald opened with a grayish-brown distressed leather patchwork parka worn with gray leather pants and stacked knee-high boots. His take on biker leathers involved cutting and seaming the jacket short and close to the body, then adding an Elizabethan-style standup collar. There were also Walter Raleigh-esque bloomers worn with swashbuckling boots, English country house tapestries fashioned into coats and bags, Gloriana-style gilded brocade jeans and a tights-and-tunic look perhaps inspired by a few late-night Errol Flynn movies.
When he exerts his skills in knitwear—his original claim to fame—Macdonald does best, as he demonstrated briefly in this collection with a huge loopy black sweater and some laddered punk knits. But he quickly returned to glitzier looks, like a lame harem jumpsuit, a gold-edged djellaba coat and some café-au-lait-toned satins for evening. It was hard to find a uniting theme other than a feeling for the Eighties. But fashion skewered that decade to death a year ago, and there is still a sense that this collection is struggling to find a raison d’etre.

The real Julien Macdonald has finally stood up at Givenchy couture. At home in London, Macdonald is the razzle-dazzle king of showbiz fashion. Trying to be a refined grownup for the prim-and-proper Givenchy audience hasn’t worked. So, after last season’s essay in intellectual deconstruction, and the previous season’s stab at careful classics, Macdonald is finally showing what he’s made of. It’s brash and it’s loud. It’s got the leather and the bondage and the bodies and the eye-socking rainbows of color. And, hell, why not? If that’s what you do, go on and do it.
That means a black leather trouser suit cut into strips and fastened with aggressive bows. It means a white biker jacket encrusted with gold beads over a flouncy white leather ball skirt. A gold guipure lace Napoleon coat, bristling with fringed epaulets. An evening gown pieced from chiffon handkerchiefs that graduate from yellow through orange.
The neon minidresses, the punk-pink-dyed mink and the coats and gowns with trailing trains had a straightforward honesty about them. They’re good-time clothes aimed straight between the eyes of the pop-ocracy of the world. If Macdonald’s new bid for a house identity went straight over the heads of the stunned ladies in the audience, so be it. There are plenty of new high-spenders in Paris this week who just might get it, and love it. And even if they don’t, Macdonald can say that instead of pussyfooting around, he’s at last given Givenchy his undiluted all.

For Givenchy, Julien Macdonald surfed several of the trend waves that are crashing on the fashion beach for summer. That meant Mediterranean-style versions of the season’s ultra-short, sporty and combat-inspired looks, and hot doses of color.
Ignoring the house’s former reputation for elegant, ladylike suits, Macdonald cut a white piqué jacket with matching micro shorts and paired a classic black jacket with sheer mesh trousers. His focus then turned mostly on resort clothes aimed at those who vacation in places like Saint-Tropez—and whose idea of fashion is to accessorize their hot-pink swimwear with a see-through sport jacket. Rounding out the casually dressy options were shredded lavender denims, and suede jackets and jeans done in vivid jungle-pattern patchwork. For evening, Macdonald channeled the current feeling for goddessy dresses and prints. His best: a black plissé-silk dress with a black empire waistband.

Amid incessant industry rumors—firmly rebutted by his bosses at LVMH—that he is about to leave Givenchy, Julien Macdonald staged a show meant to convince his critics that he has mastered the refinements of haute couture. For this make-or-break collection, he began by going back to basics, which for this house means the iconic clothes Hubert de Givenchy designed for Audrey Hepburn in the ’50s. Macdonald opened the show with his renditions of two obvious choices: the little black dresses Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Sabrina.
But where to go from there? Clarity of vision—and the conviction to develop within a single genre—has always been a problem with Macdonald’s couture presentations. Last season his show was all sexed-up razzle-dazzle, staged against the flashing neon lights of a downtown red-light district. During another season, he presented couture as if he were an intellectual deconstructionist. In an arena dominated by the work of visionary designers, it is this inconsistency that has audiences confused.
Following the Audrey-toned opening, Macdonald reverted to sharp tailoring with an aggressive feeling, which put it closer to the hard-edged ’80s than the romantic femininity making news in Paris this week. There were mannish three-piece pinstriped pant and skirt suits, accessorized with matching oversize trilbies. One white military suit came with silver metal bars bolted onto the front of the jacket, a play on frogging that gave the impression of a caged torso. Macdonald also made an effort to employ the techniques of couture by using rope details, cutouts, broderie anglaise, organza and lace to display flesh and female curves. It was certainly his best shot at adult sophistication thus far—but in a city that is breathing lightness, delicacy and color, the hardness of the look seemed strangely off track.

Givenchy Jelly Gladiator  Jelly gladiator sandal with adjustable ankle strap and logo detail.

Givenchy Grommet Clutch   Leather flap front clutch with gunmetal grommet detail. Magnetic snap closure and removable wrist strap. Fabric lined interior with zip pocket and large open pocket. 6.5″ x 11″ x 1.25″.