The Woman Of The House

SINCE BECOMING GIVENCHY’S FIRST FEMALE CREATIVE DIRECTOR, CLARE WAIGHT KELLER HAS DONE FAR MORE THAN DRESS A DUCHESS—SHE’S TRIED ON CHANGE AND FINDS IT FITS JUST FINE.

- Hamish Bowles

ALTHOUGH SHE HEADS a storied Parisian couture house, Givenchy’s creative director, Clare Waight Keller, does much of her creative strategizing in stately isolation a Eurostar’s journey away from the brand’s hub in the bustling Eighth Arrondissement—under the whitewashed eaves of a handsome Georgian house in London’s leafy Kensington, in fact, where she has transformed a former pied-à-terre into her research-and design laboratory, lined with books and her archive.

A brace of former bedrooms is now subsumed by racks of garments that might trigger design ideas—pieces from her own wardrobe or finds from decades spent trawling the Portobello Road and London’s quirky vintage stores. The giant inspiration boards that line the walls of the Givenchy studios are photographed and printed out to a manageable scale for Waight Keller to work on here, too (she often wades through 1,000 images to arrive at the 50 she needs). “Visuals are so critical to getting the mood and to everyone understanding it,” Waight Keller says. “It’s important to have the right information around you—and it’s nice having a completely silent space that’s just mine to think over everything.”