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Givenchy show inspired by nature

French designer features sweaters plus neoprene skirts

IT’S AMAZING HOW kinky an old-school ski sweater can be.

In the hands of Givenchy designer Riccardo Tisci, even the most naive and tenderhearted looks are imbued with a brooding, dangerous sensuality. Case in point, the label’s autumn-winter 2010-11 ready-to-wear show Sunday, which faintly pulsated with latent S&M impulses.

The show, held in a cavernous high school where the body-heat generated by the closely packed audience members was the sole source of warmth, started off tamely — for a Givenchy display. Except for the rhinestone-covered knit gloves and bags, the camel coloured jackets and pantsuits that opened the show looked almost utterly unremarkable. But the momentum built quickly.

Tisci, an avid scuba diver, looked to his hobby — and January’s menswear display centred around neoprene — serving up skintight pants, parkas and abbreviated skirts in the wetsuit material. The skirts, which had big plastic zippers up the front, were paired with the ski sweaters, knit with folksy patterns in light green, red and ivory.

“I looked to the mountains on the top of the world and to bottom of the sea, because I like to bring together the two extremes,” Tisci, his cheeks smudged with red glitter from the models’ sparkling ruby kisses, said in a backstage interview. “It’s all about the extremes.”

After the ski-scuba looks, Tisci sent out little apron dresses with black lace pannelling that was very kinky French maid and slip dresses with ostrich feather bustiers and diaphanous trains.

The looks raised the temperature in the wintery venue. The frozen solid audience of fashion insiders thawed out and hooted and screamed and applauded Tisci and his ravishing clothes.