Givenchy’s FW19 collection welcomed the return of Clare Waight Keller, the house’s first female artistic director, to Paris where she had debuted her first Givenchy collection. Prior to her current appointment, Keller was director at Chloe, where she refined her popular feminine aesthetic, attracting clients like Meghan Markle.

Paris’s Jardin des Plantes served the perfect backdrop, being a botanical garden classified as a national historical landmark. Candy apples were handed out before the show commenced, bringing the collection’s Garden of Eden theme to a full circle. Models emerged through a gap in a wall in nearly complete darkness, and were further hidden behind a cloud of smoke.

Titled “The Winter of Eden”, Givenchy’s newest collection surveyed Eve’s transformative personality portrayed through a range of sharply tailored womenswear and plissé dresses. The forms reflected a sense of clean modernity that Eve would have adopted if she were a contemporary woman in the current day and age.

Floral prints made an appearance against winter blues and cool tones while cuts with ruffles bloomed throughout the streamlined forms at necklines and wrists. These pleated gowns were layered under double-breasted coats and jackets with sharply tailored shoulders. More floral in the form of sparkling silver embroidery reminiscent of weeping willows branched along black canvases.

Textured sleeves accentuated shoulders on pieces made in smooth sculptural forms that contrasted the pointed shoulders seen on the snakeskin coats. Reptilian references were seen with these coats, along with heels and matching accessory bags. A venomous green suit was coordinated with a blush beige top, resembling a layer of reptilian skin against human skin. White silk jackets contrasted monotone black leather outfits, presenting the dichotomies between purity and evil, good and bad.

Keller’s attention to detail extended to the models’ pedicures, as those with exposed hands and feet had their nails painted in crimson red. Take a closer behind-the-scenes look of the models getting ready backstage: