On Thursdays, we read reviews or news stories about art and study the language used to describe them. This week’s article is about Givenchy fashion trends for Pre-Fall 2018. The writer interviews Clare Waight Keller about her second collection for the fashion house.
Here are a few photos from the shoot by GOMEZ DE VILLABOA/WWD.
Here are the first three paragraphs from WWD. We’ll look at one at a time:
Boho is over — at least as far as Clare Waight Keller is concerned. As if to banish for good the girly romance of her Chloé tenure, the designer’s pre-fall collection for Givenchy, her second for the brand, mined deeper into the masculine-feminine territory she mapped out in her debut show.
Boho is short for Bohemian, which is a style that is also described as indie, hippie, free-spirited, or gypsy. In the second sentence, as if to banish for good the girly romance of her Chloé tenure, means that this designer had a girly, romantic style when she worked for Chloé, but now she has changed it. In the second part of that sentence, mined deeper into the masculine-feminine territory she mapped out in her debut show, the writer is saying that the designer continued in the style of her first show, where her designs were not clearly masculine or feminine.
With its mix of oversize outerwear and geek-chic midi dresses, the lineup — shot at a private manor in Kent, England — felt bang in tune with a period of increasingly radicalized gender politics. In fact, shoulders haven’t been this big since the advent of power dressing in the Eighties.
In the second paragraph, the writer mentions geek-chic midi dresses – this means the dresses are mid-length and they make geek style look cool. She also says the lineup felt bang in tune with a period of increasingly radicalized gender politics. She means that the collection was very appropriate for this time when the politics of gender are becoming more extreme. In the next sentence, she talks about power dressing, which was a style that helped women become more powerful in work and politics.
Waight Keller kept the volume current with soft, sculptural constructions like a trenchcoat trimmed with leather and snaps, or chunky monochrome fake fur jackets and coats structured with graphic herringbone motifs. Edgy color clashes telegraphed self-possessed cool.
In the third paragraph, the writer describes the way the designer kept the large size of the clothes from being too overpowering by the materials she used. She also says that using bold colors together sends a message of being cool.
I’ve chosen 5 words or phrases for you to focus on today. They are in bold. If you don’t know them, look up the meaning, synonyms, antonyms, and other forms of these words. You can find links to Merriam-Webster dictionary sites at the bottom of this page.
What do you think of this article? Which words or phrases do you like best? Do you have questions about the vocabulary? Do you want to suggest a review for me to discuss next week? Leave a comment below!
To read the original article, written by Joelle Diderich on December 5, 2017, click the link below.
http://wwd.com/runway/2018-pre-fall/paris/givenchy/review/