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Carven Creative Director, Guillaume Henry is devastatingly handsome. And his clothes are as pretty as he. Of all the silhouettes we’ve seen this season, Henry’s were the most flattering and the most subtle, with just slightly accentuated hips, not so much that you look like a geometric pear, as is oft the case with the big-hip look. Designing for the girl not the media, Henry told i-D online he was inspired by “middle age paintings”. One skirt that had journalists showing off their art history degrees backstage bore a print from 17th century provincial painter Johannes Vermeer. “When I first start a collection I look at books, I research and spend time in the library”, Adonis continued. Mustard woollen dresses, artful cutouts and bold colourful stripes on slim-fit trousers and tube dresses brought that young, flirty confidence that the former Givenchy designer has perpetuated since joining the house in 2009. Detached shoulder pads on dresses that flapped like fairy wings as the girls walked were a pastiche (we thought) of power dressing. These girls just wanna have fun. As the finale began, a sentence from Suzy Menkes’ fashion roundup printed in the International Herald Tribune this morning came to mind, “The successful designers are those who can serve up a fashion fusion of print and shape”.
Text: Sarah Raphael
Photography: Mitchell Sams
Click here to see our AW12 Womenswear coverage in full.
