In Conversation with Givenchy's Sarah Burton | PLUS Doechii Is British Vogue's Cover Star!

0:29This is The Run Thru. I'm Chloe Mel. portfolio in the magazine. What did you think about these photos? I loved them. I love them, especially love the cover with that really gorgeous floral print and the very kind of statement neckline. It was great. We actually have our cover star Dochi is also wearing Givenchy and that cover just launched today. I'm so excited for Sarah because I think this This debut was so terrific. It was a real standout of Fashion Week and is such a fantastic star and so much goodwill behind her and so many fantastic women. So it feels really like a lovely moment to be celebrating her.

1:11Power women in powerful poses and powerful clothes. Exactly. Exactly. And speaking of powerful women and powerful clothes, another big Givenchy moment Tuesday evening at Windsor Castle for the state dinner. The Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, wore a beautiful custom Givenchy gown to meet President Macron and his wife. So it's been it's been a big Sarah Burton week all around. Yeah. And I mean, they have such a long standing relationship, Kate, The Princess of Wales and Sarah Burton. Well, of course, the wedding dress, lest anyone forget. Choma, I want to hear everything about your cover star.

1:55Yeah, I'm so thrilled. I think Dochi captured all of our imaginations earlier in the year with her fantastic Grammy performance and being one of the few women to win a Grammy for rap record of the year. and then before that was it before that after that when she took fashion week and was just in like you just couldn't take your eyes off her she she kind of had like lady gaga-esque commitment to different characters and reinvention and actually it was so great one of the best quotes in the story is from lady gaga and lady gaga talks about what she kind of represents in this new sort of landscape um musical landscape and so it was really fantastic to get her comments for the story.

2:41She was shot by Elisabetta Porodina and styled by my friend Stella Greenspan. So it was a really great team. Yeah, yeah. So it was Stella's first Vogue cover and it's so funny. We'd been doing, I don't know if this is too cheesy for the podcast, but her and I do vision boards every year. Oh my God, you're so cute. And she had put on her vision board like she wanted to do a British Vogue cover. I want to do a vision board with you and Stella. Wait, what else is on your vision board, Choma? Oh, I can't tell you. I hope it hasn't happened yet. But I have some, I have vacation time on my, on my vision board.

3:19I have work-life balance on my vision board. I have lots of things. Okay. Yeah. Jasmine Hughes, who's actually a dear friend of the, our producer of the show, Stephanie. So. Oh really? I didn't know that. Yes. Stephanie was actually, yeah, she, yeah, she had mentioned her and I thought, yeah, she'd be great and and jasmine was super up for it and she spent time with her in la and yeah it was it was it's a really fun story i'm so excited choma this is a that's a big big coup big moment thanks thanks it was quite it was quite the cover to pull together so i'm glad we pulled it off i'm glad we pulled it off it all came together choma tell me everything about the celine show i was obsessed it was such a great show we all arrived i arrived with our colleague sam sussman We went into the show together and what was really fun was there were Celine branded logoed bikes lined up all the way along the entrance.

4:13That looked amazing. It was really fun. And they all had these huge straw baskets and there were Celine branded umbrellas, a huge Celine foulard floating above guests in the entrance as you walked into the venue. So it felt like a really beautiful entrance and a nice start to the show. Where was it? It was at their headquarters. Okay. Which are on Rue Vivienne, which we actually went, we passed a restaurant that you and I ate in, dined in one time in Paris. So quite an sort of easy central location in Paris. But they shut down streets around it and it was a lot of buzz. There were so many people there.

4:58And the show was just really, was really terrific. I think I love that Michael Ryder, who has worked at Ralph Lauren and he worked under Nicolas Garcia at Balenciaga. He also worked for Phoebe Philo. So we all knew it was going to be big shoes to fill because obviously his former boss also designed Celine. And then, of course, you had Hidi Slamane, who was obviously one of the most important designers in the last 10 years. So there were big shoes to fill, but I think he really rose to the occasion. There was this aesthetic that I would call kind of global prep because there's a sort of version of prep in every single big fashion capital that I can think of.

5:45I think of London in the 80s and Sloan Rangers, which was something that Sarah Moa wrote about in her review. And then it was so fun to see there were the – what are the shoes, the loafers that you wear? Oh, Belgian loafers. Belgian loafers. and I always associate them with you and kind of New York. And there were kind of a version of that. But he also had jazz shoes and there was some really fun footwear. But I just I love this idea of scarf dressing. I love the menswear. There were riffs on American sportswear and rugby shirts and big sort of drapey sweatshirts that were really great and fantastic denim, high water denim that was super fun and kind of 80s, 1970s inspired.

6:29and really great tailoring, really great coats, fantastic menswear. I thought it was a really, really great show. Me too. I loved the creased jeans. Me too. Those are my favorite. I know. I want to start ironing all my jeans. I actually do iron my pants a lot with the crease. The Vogue Runway team did a really fun live blog of the show. And Laya called it Electro Yuppie, which I thought was really funny. and Jose called it perverted prep. And I do like these ideas of sort of a subverted preppy style. And no, I thought it was fantastic and so much fun to sort of pull everything apart. And the colors were so great.

7:12Oh, the colors were so great. And I think the invitation was wrapped in a Celine scarf and you could see people were already integrating that scarf around their neck, around their waist. I think there's been a trend in the Vogue offices. I hear that in New York Vogue offices that there's been a trend for everybody wearing scarves and belts. Everyone's wearing scarves over their pants or their skirts. Exactly. So I think that you guys were ahead of that trend. So we're going to see much more scarf dressing. I kind of love it. But yes, that was kind of the end, the unofficial end to men's fashion week, I guess.

7:50I guess bleeding into couture because now Schiaparelli sort of kicked things off on Monday morning. And Schiaparelli is always such a... Yeah, what was your take on Schiaparelli? I think it was funny because we've talked so much about the corset and Lauren Sanchez, who also wore Schiaparelli as one of her looks during her wedding. Schiaparelli couture, no less. Schiaparelli couture. but this was kind of an undoing of the slight loosening of the corset there were some much more there were bias cut dresses I thought were really pretty and it had a much it was more there was more transparency I think Daniel took inspiration from a collection that just came before the second world war so 1938 and it was a bit it was a more loosened up, but it didn't mean that his guests were loosened up because I think for me, Schiaparelli starts before the show starts.

8:49You had Cardi B on the steps of the show. With a raven. With a raven. How they coordinated that is beyond me because the dress alone was an event. But Cardi B doesn't do things by halves. And I think we're going to see her all over couture week. Backgrid, which is one of the photo wires, the agencies that we use, labels, you know, does captions for all their photos. And they got very creative with their captions on the Cardi. What did they say? It was like, Cardi B is always looking for reinvention and the raven is a symbol of new beginnings. She is embracing her next chapter. And I was like, all right, Backgrid, simmer down.

9:29Maybe that Backgrid copywriter needs a job. Truly. Hey, I can't do this.

9:38We were all here talking about the maybe most attention-grabbing look of the collection, which was the sculpted torso that was on worn backwards. So it was sort of realistic shaped breasts and belly button out of sort of padded satin with a recreation of a rhinestone encrusted heart necklace that actually beats. Wow. Yes, it was, you know, obviously a reference to Schiaparelli's codes of surrealism, but this was an actual reference to a Salvador Dali ruby heart of a ruby encrusted heart that beats inside of a gold heart. So that was definitely a showstopper of sorts. He always has at least one.

10:31What other couture moments are you excited for, Choma? I'm really looking forward to Glenn Martin's first show for Margiela. The runway with the exclusive interview that went up Tuesday morning. Yeah, very excited. We are recording this on midday Tuesday. So the show will have already debuted by the time this goes live. But that doesn't diminish our anticipation. No, no, we're all excited. And I think we're also really excited to see what Demner will do because that will be his closing collection for Balenciaga. And I imagine he's going to pull out all the stops. So I don't know if Cardi B is invited, but I'm sure she'll be one of many celebrities on the front row there who will be there to cheer him on.

11:21Also happening this week is Wimbledon. I don't know if you've been watching all the courtside looks, but people really get dressed here. Oh, the Wimbledon looks are like nothing else. Also, isn't it extremely hot in London right now? It is. These poor men in suits. But everyone's in like a suit. I know. I mean, the couple style has been really great, don't you think? Oh, we love it. I mean, the Monica Barbaro and Andrew Garfield in their matching Ralph Lauren Whites, tennis Whites, were top notch for spectator style. Sienna Miller and Olly Green always go and always look great and dress the part.

11:57And Olivia Rodrigo and Louis Partridge look so cute. They're so in love. I know. They just look so in love. And I think she's coming off the high of her Glastonbury performance. And I just think they're just the cutest couple ever. Yes. Chloe, I have questions. Can you please explain to me what Hampton's market taxonomy is? Well, that's just what I was calling a very funny piece that Elise Taylor did on the high-end markets, It's the bougie farm stands and markets of the Hamptons because there are more and more absurdly expensive but pretending to look low-key and quaint farm stands and general stores in the Hamptons where some places like Loaves and Fishes don't even post prices.

12:49What? At Round Swamp, you will spend$32 on a small thing of guacamole. No, get out of here. Elise did an amazing sort of breakdown of what to buy at each place, what the vibe is at each place. There's a new contender, the Sagaponic General Store. That merch has become the merch to be wearing on the Long Island Railroad. So, yes, it was a very funny sort of anthropological deep dive into the Hamptons. And we, my family and I are going to spend the weekend at my stepsister's house in East Hampton this weekend. So I'm very excited to see some of these places in action. All right, Choma, as always, a delight to do headlines with you and chat about the week.

13:35Yeah, so good to see you. Same. So now here's Nicole Phelps' conversation with Givenchy creative director Sarah Burton. The run-through will be back in a moment.

13:59You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

14:34Thank you, Sarah, for joining us on the podcast. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. I want to jump right in because on my desk this morning was the August issue of Vogue. Anne Hathaway is wearing a dress of your design for Givenchy. And inside, I don't know if you've seen this yet, but inside there are pages and pages of her wearing other things that we saw on your runway. And I wanted to start by asking, how does this kind of a moment feel? You've been in fashion for over two decades. is this a big moment still when you get a cover when a celebrity is wearing your clothes in a magazine?

15:20Yes. I mean, it's always thrilling when you get a cover and when a celebrity is wearing your clothes. I think that, especially the cover of American Vogue, that's always, it's always really, really thrilling. And it's funny because even at the beginning of this sort of journey, Annie came to the late streets and took my picture. So it's amazing that it's also Annie Leibovitz taking the pictures as well. So it's always like, yeah, it's always a bit of an, a surreal experience when you see those pictures. So it's great. The photo shoot is beautiful. And in one of the images, Anne Hathaway is wearing the sculpted bra top and she's standing in front of Sargent's painting of Madame X.

16:00And the parallels are quite striking. I know. Do you know what? I always, I mean, throughout my whole sort of life as a designer, we've always had these amazing shoots all over the walls as inspiration. So to see this sort Sargent painting and Anne Hathaway in the outfit was kind of amazing. What I love is it's always sort of taken and you sort of see the things in a different light altogether. Somehow you design them in one way and then what's really amazing is when they're taken and portrayed in a completely different way, which is again inspiring and it sort of inspires you to do something new next time.

16:33So it was really great to see. Actually, I saw the Sargent exhibition. There's a Sargent exhibition at the, I think it was the Tate Britain not long ago. So it was great to see it next to that painting. Amazing. Let's go way back. You have said that you've known since the age of eight that you wanted to be a designer. How did you know then? Well, actually I was really, when I grew up, I was always drawing. So I never really sat still and I was always drawing, always painting. I always had a pen in my hand. I could never sit and watch telly or do anything without drawing or making things. And I actually grew up in a very creative house.

17:11My mum was a teacher. My nana had a knitting shop in Liverpool, so she was always knitting and making clothes. I think because I was one of five, we were always out of the house because it was a bit chaotic because we were in the house. So my mum would always either put us in the garden or out for a walk or we'd always go to, you know, she would always take us, my mum and dad would take us to sort of sculpture parts and art galleries and museums. So I think I knew that I always was surrounded by kind of, I suppose, creativity in many ways, whether it was making something out of a box at home or a painting, like a pre-Raphaelite painting in the Manchester Art Museum.

17:49So it was this, I just always knew that it was something I wanted to do, to do something creative. I think I really wanted to be a painter when I was very little. And then at eight, I thought, no, actually, I want to make clothes. So that's sort of how it started. And then I was fortunate enough to have a teacher at school who said to me, you know, if you want to do fashion, you really should try and go to St. Martins. And it was great because in many ways, being in Manchester, I was a little bit disconnected from that fashion world. I didn't come from a fashion family or anybody who really knew anything about fashion.

18:21So it was really because of her saying, you know, go and do Arts Foundation in Manchester, then go try and get into St. Martin's that I ended up going to St. Martin's and sort of everything followed from that point. So it sort of shows the importance of teachers actually being from a family of teachers. I just sort of help teachers hold a very special place in my heart, I think. On the subject of teachers, I know you were back at McQueen and here at Givenchy too. You've talked a lot about opening the studio and bringing people in and letting young people see how the magic is made, so to speak.

19:00Yes, definitely. I think when I first started at McQueen, I had an amazing tutor at Sir Martin's and he introduced me to Leeds. And I think that I learned so much from him. And I also learned so much from Lee being in the studio. And you realize that my early sort of time at McQueen, I spent a lot of time going to factories and going to artisans and learning the craft of what we do. So I always encourage people to, and young people especially, to sort of understand that really fashion design is sort of made up of so many different components. So many people are important to create the sort of final results of almost the process being as important.

19:38It's not more important than the final result. So, yes, I really believe in opening up the doors, making it very democratic, making sure that everybody realizes how important all the team members are. So you've been at Givenchy now almost a year, right? You arrived in September. Talk about how you're feeling at this point. You have one showdown. You have one coming up in a couple of months. What's your state of mind? What was so great was to start with this almost like a blank page. When I arrived at Geronchi, it's this real jewel of a house. It sort of has menswear, couture, women's wear and in-house ateliers, which is really unheard of in a lot of places.

20:21So what I did in the very beginning was really go to the ateliers, build relationships with the ateliers, found out how they worked. They understood, learned how I worked and this sort of building of relationships. So it's been great for the last 10 months building all these relationships with the teams and also kind of looking at things in a completely different way. So, like I said, starting with sort of a blank page and thinking, OK, what, you know, like any house is built on foundations. So the last really 10 months I spent sort of building the foundations of what I'd love the house to be going forward.

20:55Tell us about what you found in the foundations of the atelier. This story is almost too good to be true in a way. There's a renovation happening. And what do you all stumble across? What was so amazing is that the first week I got there, I think it was the second day I met the woman who does all the archiving, who's this amazing woman called Lore. And she has sort of painstakingly over the last four years archived everything about Givenchy, whether it's a picture of his dog to a piece of paper to a receipt to what his favorite dinner was. So it was this amazing archive. And so when I first went to the archive and looked at the first image that comes up on the database, it was this picture of a brown paper bag.

21:41And I was like, I couldn't understand what this bag was. And then next to it was this beautiful collection, which was Hubert Girondi's first collection. It was very Hitchcock. It was very stripped back. It was really a very kind of, And what I realized later was that it was his first collection. So what had happened about two years ago when they'd renovated his first studio, they had found in the walls of the building. And at the beginning, I couldn't believe it. I said, don't you mean in a cupboard? And they're like, no, no, no, in the wall. So anyways, in the wall, plastered into the wall, were all the patterns from his very first collection, which was such a kind of gift in a way.

22:21Because I love the idea of a house having all these old stories. and I love the idea of ghosts in the wall because I think there were probably a lot of ghosts in that house, a lot of ghosts in many houses, but I love the fact that this history existed in the walls of this house. And then they were put in these bin liners and then they were retrieved by the team at Givenchy. And in each of these brown envelopes was a pattern and each pattern was a pattern for a garment from his very first collection. And they were so beautiful because they had, I talk about ateliers and about cast people, but each of these patterns was not made in paper but made in calico and they had annotated on the patterns were all the names of the models.

23:03So Bettina was written on one pattern. So it's almost like you not only had the sort of ghosts of the models who had worn them but also the people who had made them in these patterns. So it sort of talked to the atelier, it talked to pattern cutting, it talked to the women that he was working with. So it was a really, and also it talked to a time when he was a young designer. So he was just the beginning. He was 24 years old, and you always think of him as this older designer. So it had all this, it was immediately like, okay, go back to the beginning and start there. How much did you use those patterns from that first collection of Hubert de Givenchy, and how much did your debut sort of spin from your own mind?

23:45How are you building your vocabulary there? Yeah, I didn't use any of the patterns, if I'm honest. It was almost more of a metaphor. So really what I wanted to do was, you know, it was almost, I looked at it like sort of in an anatomical way thinking, okay, to build a house, you have to build the backbone, the spine, all the foundation. So, and to me, it's always, and it always has been about a silhouette. So what I really wanted to do was at the very beginning, establish, take all the kind of noise away and take all the fuss away and just establish what is the silhouette. And the kind of gift of Givenchy is it's a house where you have the tailoring and the flue.

24:24So you have this juxtaposition of hard and soft. And so I really wanted to take all of the surface decoration away and work on a sort of a modern silhouette for women today. So the tailoring with a slightly dropped shoulder and the nipped waist. And so I really wanted to start on what's the tailored silhouette and what's the dress and again stripping back the dress so it has a simplicity to it. And I thought if I can start with the foundation, then it can grow from there. You say stripped back, but it's quite sculptural. It's very strong. Yes. I wanted it to really echo a woman's body. I love the fact that you feel quite held in the pieces.

25:04So I did a lot of twirls for the tailoring especially and the dresses, but I wanted it to be instantly recognizable as Givenchy. So it had an immediate, immediately you knew what that silhouette was. Do you foresee that silhouette sort of continuing? Will we recognize it next season and the season on? Do you imagine, you know, manipulating it a bit? I think I'd like to, I'd like to take it. And I mean, I always think that it's great to sort of, to challenge things and push them somewhere else. So I love the idea of taking that quite kind of sculptural silhouette and softening it and sort of how do you take away the canvassing inside the jacket?

25:47How do you soften the fabric? So I'd like to sort of take that silhouette and soften it for the next season. At one point you were talking about your Givenchy, your first collection, and you said that it was about talking to women about what they would want to wear. And I wonder if there are women in particular that you talk to that you take a lot of pointers from. And what were those conversations like? Completely. I mean, for me, it's like always a conversation. So a lot of what I do is 3D in fittings. I mean, I've been very fortunate to do many, many shows. I love doing fashion shows. But I've also, in the past probably five years, learned so much from dressing women for real life, which is essentially what our role is as designers.

26:33And I've learned so much from dressing women for situations where they need to feel strong or maybe they feel vulnerable and they need to feel empowered. So, you know, I very much have conversations with lots of different women about how they want to feel, what they need to feel. Like when you put a jacket on and it makes you feel a certain way, when you put a dress on it makes you feel a different way. So to me, it was about talking to the women I had dressed, but also talking to the women that I work with, how, you know, I loved it after I did my first collection. All the pattern maker, head of Atelier said to me, oh, so I want that coat and that dress.

27:07I thought, great. So the idea that people in the studio want to wear their clothes is not just for a show or for, you know, people often say to designers, who's your woman? And I think that what I love is dressing women as a collective and women in their different, in all the different moments in their life when they want to feel strong or they have a vulnerability or they, so I think that, you know, I love taking what I do and then making them feel the best they possibly can in the clothes. There's a beautiful part of the article in the August issue about you where Kate Blanchett, who you've dressed many times, says, you feel so looked after when you put on Sarah's clothes, there's a gasp because they have this incredible surprise, but they feel somehow inevitable.