Givenchy Appoints Sarah Burton as Creative Director

The British designer Sarah Burton is the new creative director at Givenchy, filling a vacancy atop the French brand that opened when the American designer Matthew M. Williams stepped down in January after fewer than four years in the role. Ms. Burton’s appointment, which was announced in a news release on Monday by LVMH, the French multinational that owns Givenchy, makes her the eighth designer to lead the 72-year-old house, and only the second woman.

Ms. Burton is joining Givenchy after spending 26 years — her entire working career — at Alexander McQueen, where she had served as creative director for 13 years before stepping down in 2023. In that time, she was widely credited with putting her own (commercially successful) stamp on the high fashion brand started by the designer Lee Alexander McQueen, a longtime friend of Ms. Burton’s, whom she succeeded after he died by suicide.

Sidney Toledano, the chairman of Givenchy’s board, said in a statement that Ms. Burton’s
“unique vision and approach to fashion will be invaluable” to the label. In her own statement, Ms. Burton referred to the house as “a jewel,” expressing gratitude to her new employers and also to Mr. McQueen, “who taught me so much.” Ms. Burton is reportedly expected to start working at the Givenchy atelier on Avenue George V in Paris this week and to present her first collection at the fall 2025 Paris Fashion Week shows.

Her hiring comes at a time when many industry observers have criticized the paucity of female designers heading major fashion brands. Givenchy’s only other female creative director, Clare Waight Keller, held the role from 2017 to 2020 and was recently appointed the creative director of Uniqlo.

Among Ms. Keller’s distinctions while at the helm of Givenchy was having designed a dress worn by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, at her wedding to Prince Harry in 2018. Years earlier, Ms. Burton, soon after becoming creative director at Alexander McQueen, had her own opportunity to design for the British royals, scoring a coup when she was commissioned to create a wedding gown worn by Princess Catherine at her wedding to Prince William in 2011.

While often praised for her romantic vision, skilled construction and references encompassing sci-fi, British history, the rigor of cavalry tailoring and the wonders of the natural world (Ms. Burton once showed a collection inspired by the female reproductive system), her work for Alexander McQueen never quite attained the visionary audacity or tortured poetics of his collections. Now freed to establish a vocabulary and grammar unmistakably her own at Givenchy, perhaps she will, at last, escape the shadow of her brilliant, troubled mentor.