Who is Givenchy's Clare Waight Keller? All you need to know about Meghan Markle's wedding dress designer
And the bride wore Givenchy. After months of speculation about runners and riders, it was the rank outsider, Givenchy’s artistic director Clare Waight Keller, who ultimately landed the job of designing Meghan Markle’s wedding dress.
Despite all conjecture, hers was a name scarcely mentioned by commentators. Being a British woman at the helm of a Parisian house meant she was somewhat hidden in plain sight - fashion pundits, mostly, were talking about the thoroughly British brands. So when we first caught sight of Waight Keller on the steps of St George’s Chapel, making some last minute adjustments to Meghan’s five metre veil, it was a pleasant surprise to all.
It is little more than a year since 47 year-old Waight Keller, from Birmingham, was appointed at the helm of Givenchy, the Parisian couture house founded in 1952 by Hubert de Givenchy. Yet with this commission, she has secured her place in the house’s hall of fame and arguably brought it full circle, back to the glory days when Monsieur de Givenchy would outfit Audrey Hepburn and Wallis Simpson with couture gowns.
In an interview given the day after the big reveal, Waight Keller described the moment that Prince Harry thanked her for her work on the gown.
"He came straight up to me and he said 'oh my God, thank you, she looks absolutely stunning'," she explained. "So I think for the both of them, they were just radiant at that time. I think everybody saw on television - he was absolutely in awe, I think. She looked just incredible and it showed."
‘Ms. Markle chose to work with her for her timeless and elegant aesthetic, impeccable tailoring, and relaxed demeanour,’ Kensington Palace officials explained in a statement. ‘Ms. Markle also wanted to highlight the success of a leading British talent who has now served as the creative head of three globally influential fashion houses – Pringle of Scotland, Chloé, and now Givenchy.’
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Waight Keller studied fashion at Ravensbourne College of Art, London, before completing a Masters degree in Fashion Knitwear at The Royal College of Art. She moved to New York in the late 1990s for her first job as a stylist at Calvin Klein, before completing stints on the design teams at Ralph Lauren and Gucci.
In 2005, she was appointed creative director at Pringle of Scotland, where she stayed until 2011. She then became creative director of Parisian house, Chloe, before Givenchy named her its first ever female artistic director in March 2017.
Givenchy’s previous head, Riccardo Tisci, was a name bandied around a lot more frequently in the ‘who’ll do it’ discussions than Waight Keller’s. He left Givenchy in 2017 after more than a decade in his position and, as he is now the creative director of the British house Burberry, he was considered a strong contender.
Tisci’s aesthetic is one that champions glitz and glamour all the way. It was a quality that the bride, a former Hollywood dweller herself, would have likely quite enjoyed in her previous life, before she met Prince Harry. Streetwear had become a key category for the brand - sales were strong, but the ethos rather jarred with the heritage of the house.
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Tisci, while at Givenchy, created tour costumes for Beyonce, holidayed on yachts with Kate Moss, and made a bespoke wedding gown for the reality television star Kim Kardashian when she married Kanye West in 2014, decking the subsequent bridal ‘squad’ in matching Givenchy outfits, too.
Waight Keller’s vision, however, has been considerably more understated from the offset. Her first collections for the house were met with rave reviews (‘a breezy injection of softness into the label’ is how Lisa Armstrong described her debut).
She is also an extremely private individual (despite finding herself now at the helm of a company steeped in glamour and heritage) and had successfully managed to tell no one outside of her trusted circle about the commission.
Her work on Meghan’s dress today harks back to some of the pieces created by Monsieur de Givenchy for private clients in the 1950s and 1960s. Embellishment free, it was all about showing the dramatic silhouettes that can be sculpted when using stiff satins and silk cady fabrics. His iconic bateau neckline, reimagined today in optic white, look as futuristic today in Waight Keller’s hands as they did when he invented them in the Fifties.
The above gown, created for Audrey Hepburn in 1955, emphasises the romantic history of the house’s handwriting. Below, a gown from the Givenchy archive in 1967, could perhaps have provided a template or starting point for Waight Keller and Ms Markle when they began their collaboration at the start of the year.
Monsieur de Givenchy passed away just a few months ago, in March this year, at the age of 91. What a crying shame that he didn’t get to see Ms Markle wearing Waight Keller’s work, reviving his iconic inventions and catapulting them forward for the next generation to swoon over.
Royal wedding | Fashion and Beauty
