In a rare interview, one of the last remaining masters of haute couture, Hubert De Givenchy, discusses the passage of fashion time with Vive La Vie.

The starched white coat, silver hair and imposing stature portend an exacting verisimilitude of the well-heeled specialist. And that he is - a practitioner of the most particular kind addressing the mind and dressing the body with a most gifted master. In the pantheon of enduring fashion gods, Hubert de Givenchy is perhaps the most reclusive, the most elusive and, the most beloved.

His own remarkable stylistic legacy aside, on his way to becoming 'Givenchy', Hubert experienced firsthand a remarkable epoch in fashion, and social history. The names that litter his inventory of reference are legend and he fascinates with the candour of one who was there. Apprenticed to Fath, Piguet, Lelong, Schiaparelli; repeatedly pursued by Dior to aid in the fruition of the New Look, and ear for Chanel when she felt her reputation being overshadowed by a new breed of designing youth...the list is manifold and very important, and Hubert de Givenchy knows and understands the characters, the genius and the personalities that today, constitute couture folklore. But the most influential of all was Balenciaga, the great Spanish master who is as formative in Hubert's design sensibility today as he was for the small boy in provincial Beauvais and the incipient young innovator who renewed the art of simplicity in fashion.

Asked why he wanted to be a great designer, Givenchy is pleased and begins to warm to his subject. "That is a nice question to ask me..." he says reflectively almost to himself. "I think that for this kind of thing, you are born...the same if you want to be a great chef, dancer, actor, you are born to do that special thing. As a young boy, my mother was a wonderful influence - she loved fashion. She would select dresses with great taste and style. I discovered more and more throughout the years of my education that I was attracted to fashion and I decided to come to Paris with my sights set on studying with Balenciaga. I was seventeen and naturally, M. Balenciaga did not rush to see me. It was a huge disappointment for me.

"The Paris of this time was just after the war and there were many changes going on after the long period of Occupation. My mother was not that happy for me to be a dress designer of course, but the times were transitional. I suppose that she felt if Hubert wants to design clothes, let him do what he wants! She never tried to talk me out of it. You must compare it to today when you do what you want in spite of what your family tell you!"

Beatrice de Givenchy and her father, Hubert's grandfather, raised their small charge in an atmosphere of mixed ambition. On the one hand, it was intended for Hubert to become a lawyer and his education was geared for this objective. On the other however, Hubert's grandfather was by all accounts, a remarkable character himself, exhibiting an irresistible dose of la boheme. Once a pupil of the painter Carot, during Hubert's childhood, he was the administrator of the Beauvais tapestry collections, and was himself a devoted collector maintaining a studio crammed with objets d'art, trophies, paintings and suits of armour.

Then, when Hubert was nine years old, he discovered a dreamworld of fantastic invention at the Pavilion of Elegance at the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris. His senses were assaulted by a new perspective - the surreal world, a celebration of the couturier's imagination, plaster mannequins were wrapped in sumptuous gowns or draped head to toe in precious silks, velvets, Chanel face, Lanvin fabrics of a hairs' breadth.... The opulent displays of sheer creative fantasy had a powerful effect on the young boy. Always an imaginative child, spending his free time drawing and sketching, he now increased his illustrative output and supplemented these secular activities with reading Vogue and Femina where the designs that most captivate him, re signed always by the same person - Balenciaga.

From that moment, the work of the great master of couturier was Hubert's centrifugal inspiration and motivation.

"If you are a painter, you want to learn with the best and as a fashion designer the best for me was always Balenciaga, and on a different level, Mme. Vionnet. The elegance and cut of Vionnet was unbelievable! Sometimes you never knew where the dress was cut. It was like a sweater - no zip, no buttoning. It was a marvellous mystery!"

His flight to Paris as a teenager was not so much an act of sedition as it was taking advantage of a lapse of accepted convention in the French familial strata. The nation breathed a huge sigh of relief as the blanketing years of Occupation were lifted and a new sort of liberalism flowed throughout the society. The opportunity to explore his instinctive calling was too good for Hubert to ignore.

So, after Liberation, he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts motivated by the now innate desire to meet the man he so admired. One day, with sketches underarm, he arrived at Balenciaga's fashion house to be given immediate short shrift by Mme. Renee, the master's manageress, who promptly turned him away with four crushing words: "Monsieur Balenciaga needs non-one". Some years later, irony wrought its familiar passage, but for now, Hubert needed to learn. Down but not out, he found work with Jacques Fath.

"Jacques Fath was not for me the same calibre of designer but it was still very important to have worked in a couture house and to learn, look and absorb", says Givenchy. "It was a little pretentious of me to expect Balenciaga to look at my amateur sketches and employ me, but I am forever grateful to M. Fath for affording me the great opportunity. If not for him, I may not be doing what I do today.

For the young designer from provincial Beauvais who had conjured miraculous creations in his imagination for celebrity models who smiled at him from the glamorous folds of the magazines as a child, Fath was just the first step on the experiential ladder. He was a voracious student and could not exclude the myriad other styles that were being touted by a plethora of couture artisans.

The next stage in his fashion education was at the House of classical designer, Robert Piguet, and then a tenure at Lucien Lelong. Lelong's was a hive of sublime embryonic talent. His assistants were two young men, Pierre Balmain and an ambitious fellow, Christian Dior who was then preparing his first solo anschluss financed by Marcel Boussac.

Dior offered Hubert the chance to go with him. Hubert declined at that time but intended to gather another six months of experience at Dior's suggestion, before reconsidering the offer. Hubert watched the birth of the 'New Look' in 1947 from the atelier of the legendary Elsa Schiaparelli, whose House collection he designed for four years.

"She gave me the responsibility of the whole boutique which was really a very interesting thing for her to do. You see, at the time, she was one of the first to create a very beautiful boutique - filled with jewellery, luxurious decor, accessories.... Now it is commonplace to have a shop with sections for the various products, but then she really had the spirit for accessories. Mme. Chanel and Mme. Schiaparelli were really competitors and to be honest, I don't think that they saw eye to eye at all! Mme. Schiaparelli was much more eccentric - she had a feel for fantasy. Chanel was very conservative whereas Mme. Schiaparelli utilised crazy artforms to make whimsical styles.

"My time at Schiaparelli was not in my opinion, the best period of Schiaparelli", he says frankly, "because she was a marvellous designer just before the war with the whole Jean Cocteau, Dali artistic influence that was so strong then. She was a fascinating person - sometimes difficult, but I learned an enormous amount with her. Through outside influences also, I defined elegance through her. She was still designing for the Duchess of Windsor, Mrs. Guinness, Daisy Fellowes, Maxime de la Falaise and many Italian aristocrats, all of whom were women of great, great elegance and style. During the whole time that I was there, M. Dior was still asking me to work for him, but Mme. Schiaparelli persuaded me to stay with her".

Hubert was decidedly ambiguous at Schiaparelli. By 1952, he had developed an abiding respect and admiration for the work of the redoubtable Madame Schiap, but he was also acutely aware of his own differing philosophies of design. It was time to do as Dior did and set out on his own which he did with the financial backing and encouragement of his family and a burgeoning clique of admirers who had begun to sit up and take notice of the new genius at Schiaparelli.

Seven years after his arrival in Paris, on February 2nd, Hubert opened his own boutique near the Parc Monceau with the aid of the renowned couture clothes house, Bettina Graziani who acted as both manageress and house model. Using his accrued experience, which by now was comprehensive and eclectic - an amalgam of disparate stylistic influences, he set out defining his own couture style which used a consistent credo - simplicity, quality of fabric and above all, elegance.

Today, with the benefits of a more distanced perspective, he reflects on the respective contributions of each of his couturier employers and in doing so, provides a rare insight into each of these colourful characters who were similar in only one fashion - the creation of haute couture.

"I wanted always, to open my own house before I was twenty five, and I was almost that age when I finally did", recalls Hubert. "I learned so much from the masters with whom I had worked from the time I was seventeen - and from each one I learned something different. Fath was an extraordinary man - full of life and it was a marvelous and amusing time. We laughed all day long and they were a wonderful family. To work in that atmosphere was so encouraging for a young man - they were very, very close to you. We would all take our bicycles and ride to the racing club to swim at lunchtime. To do that now", he laughs, "would be impossible!

"But although I was very happy there, it was not my ideal of fashion. It was nonetheless, a wonderful initiation. I then spent some time with the painter and designer, Christian Bihar who worked in movies a good deal and was at that time costumer for "Beauty and the Beast" - a very beautiful film. H encouraged me to move on to Piguet, saying that I had learned all I could from Fath. To work with a very serious designer would be more important for my career, he told me. Piguet was a great collector of paintings and he had bought many works from Bihar.

"The House of Piguet was a very different environment. Piguet was Swiss, the son of a banker - everything was in order, just so, not even the workroom was untidy. Perhaps a little boring, but very, very serious. Even the clothing reflected that. He always used the straight form - never a bias cut. A lot of blue, a lot of black, white and blue, white and black...it was a different technique altogether and so very different from Fath. All the Egyptian princesses shopped there and they were very loyal, serious customers. I learned that you must reflect the customer - if you want serious customers, your House must be equipped for that. I love to be amused but I love to work seriously.

"All through that time, although I entertained ideas of having my own house, my abiding dream was still to work with Balenciaga - the real great master. Someone I admired, someone I liked, someone I could give all my creativity to.

"I stayed just six months at Lelong. It was also a very well organised, serious, very large House with 1500 employees - it was like a factory of couture fashion. Lelong was another type of designer altogether. He never sketched, never sewed himself - he was a good manager. He would select a designer and give them two stylists which is what happened with me. That was extremely difficult because they were quite disgruntled at the time. They had worked with Balmain, who had left, then Dior who left and now there was me, and they were not happy. I do not like to work with unnecessary stress, so, I was tempted to work with Dior when he offered. There were two choices for me then - Chanel and Schiaparelli. At that time, Chanel had not yet reopened her couture house following the war. In fact, it was shut for 14 years. Only the boutique was open to sell the fragrance.

"Later I remember, just at the birth of the 'New Look', it was a fascinating period because there were many 'salons' where the new interesting people were gathering - artists, designers, intellectuals, many American writers who were living in Paris at that time. It was the first time that I had the opportunity to meet Mlle. Chanel. At that time, I was twenty-one and I remember Chanel saying - she was absolutely furious at the success of M. Dior - that gradually she would one day be the 'Great Chanel' again. It was absolutely true because not long after she was asked to reopen. The first showing was a disaster but little by little she regained her success".

His final experience as an employee was also his most frustrating. Schiaparelli was a strongminded, immensely creative woman of voluminous taste, but on the time line of fashion democracy, 'Madame Schiap' had chosen to ignore the revolution.

"It was yet another type of experience. It is fascinating to talk about now: Mme. Schiaparelli still maintained the same ideas that she had before the war. She had ignored the evolution of fashion. She had moved to the States for the duration of the war and she thought that she was still the Queen of Paris which she wasn't any more on her return to France. She had not closed her House when she was away. She asked some people to maintain the operations and I think it was the directrice who designed her collections and she had attempted to maintain the Schiaparelli 'look'. Schiaparelli returned thinking that she could pick up where she left off but she could not because that sort of artistic sensibility had changed.

"It was quite difficult for me to work there sometimes because often she would conceive of a dress and one glove would be red, the other would be green, then there would be a pink feather, or one sleeve with fox and another with mink - unbelievable! And that idea of fashion had become passe. But I tried to do my best..."

It was less an Italo-Gallic conflict of cultural interest than it was fundamental conceptual departures. "Of course, Mme. Schiaparelli was an 'Italian woman' and I was French but that is not why we disagreed. She had an extraordinary sense of fantasy, a great grasp of colour. She was the first one to do the padding and the first to use the tweed jacket for evening on broderie with gold when it was usually satin with velvet. She had a lot of invention and she was an extraordinary personality. I knew her very well, and sometimes she would say to me, 'Hubert if you have nothing better to do this evening, Greta Garbo is coming for dinner and a few friends, so come over....'"

Hubert de Givenchy had his own idea of a great couture house, and it was far from the ostentatious grandeur and fashion hierarchy engendered by the traditional houses. His 'Grand Store' would adopt a modern approach where women would be able to put together co-ordinates and look casual as well as elegant.

He was the very first couturier to combine comfort and elegance when he launched his first collection of mostly white percale shirting, a derivation of the same shirting he wore as a sailor-suited eight year old in Beauvais, but professionally the choice was more to do with reasons of economy than nostalgic tribute. His philosophy embraced the idea that simple fabrics, if marvellously put together and co-ordinated and could be easily matched or worn separately in a most refined fashion. He named the shirt style 'Bettina', for the model who had come to embody his objective and design. Givenchy was an instant success with the fashion magazines of the time and they were effusive in their praise and excitement. His fashion was light, adaptable, flexible with perfect finishes and beautifully made.

One year later, Hubert de Givenchy graced the cover of Time magazine and there was a virtual brawl in the attempts to reserve seats for his summer collection showing. The materials and fabrics he presented here captured the eyes and ears of the world with fruit motifs, scales, oysters, trompe l'oeil, faux fur and the Oriental influence which had inspired his winter collection.

In 1955, he introduced orlon, a light and simple but nonetheless luxuriant material which he transformed into crinoline dresses with puffs and gathers. Fabric is at the heart of his design theology and to this day, he travels to Lyon prior to collections to choose the materials from which he will create his modern but still sumptuous clothing.

He supplemented the clothing with accessories which reflected a subtle humour: sunshades to lift the summer dress, hand baskets, Chinese shoes with upturned toes; clever buttoning to accentuate the line of his clothes and the immortal hats which play such a prominent part in his fashion inventory. "Harmony and freshness! I want fashion to be beautiful and lively", he said at the time. "That does not mean excluding simplicity and sumptuousness - luxury can be found in the subtlety of details. The more elaborate a fabric, the more simple the form should be.

"Elegance is not only reflected in what we wear - it is a way of life. I love women who can be just as attractive in slacks and a straight shirt with a short hair style as when wearing an evening gown which can make them even more seductive".

Thus was Audrey Hepburn when she walked into his atelier dressed as he had envisaged. In her, he found the personification of this casual elegance quite immediately when she arrived for her first appointment mistakenly inscribed in the diary as that other famous Hepburn thespian. She came to represent the liberty of his ideal woman and they became firm friends as well as sympathetic artisans. A woman freed from the constraints of her clothing. One who would not be worn by her clothes, but would herself wear them.

For her films, Givenchy dressed her in character and then that personality leaped off screen to define 'the new woman' - in Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany's...In Funny Face which was all but a showcase for the art of the costumer, the image of Ms. Hepburn ethereal to an unreasonably magical point, is outfitted in the devastatingly simple wedding dress that redefined bridal habille.
Givenchy transformed the reed thin gamine into a wraith like woman of preternatural style and definitive elegance. Where Ines was Lagerfeld's muse before the much publicised fashionable hostilities, many years ago, Givenchy and Hepburn drew the same stylish breath in a partnership evoking the symbiotic perfection of Fonteyn and Nureyev.

"Many people have said to me, 'Oh, Ms. Hepburn is your ideal woman..' Well, of course she is, she is perfect! She is thin, she is tall, she has a nice shoulder line, beautiful legs, she has a neck like a swan...she is beautiful certainly, but it is not necessarily the physical look that is for me the definition of beauty - it is the way one moves because this gives you inspiration, it helps you to create your fashion. And Ms. Hepburn was so influential in this way".

As the fifties neared their end, Givenchy streamlined his simplicity even more and caused outrage at the 1957 collections. The shift dress and tiered dress made their debuts and the fashion press reacted furiously to the 'over emphasis' on simplicity, undoubtedly inspired by Ms. Hepburn whose body double was Hubert's leading model in the showing. "My dresses are dresses in the true sense of the word", she said in his defence, "light with no padding, they just simply brush the liberated body".

In New York, that year, Hubert was finally introduced to the man whose art had set his professional raison d'etre in motion. "We were immediately friends", recalls Hubert. "I told Balenciaga what had happened the day I saw his directrice and he was furious with her. 'Oh, Renee...she was so stupid to have done that! It would have been marvellous to have worked together, to have taught you and to have watched you develop. I would have had someone to continue my career after me'. At that point, I actually entertained ideas of stopping my own House and going to work with him. But he told me that he was getting old and that I had my future in front of me. He told me that we were now friends and that although we would not work together, he wanted to teach me as well.

"It was marvellous because you know, if you meet someone that you have always admired, and you are ready to understand all that they can teach you, you will learn so very much".

Cristobal Balenciaga at last became his active mentor. Hubert travelled with him, toured Spain, Balenciaga's native home with the master - "I discovered Spain, but I also discovered fashion. Even after having worked with all those important designers for so long, I had indeed developed an idea of fashion, but I really did not understand what is fashion. You see, Balenciaga was not only a really great designer, he also had all the best qualities of a man - he was religious, very honest; he was a great artist, a great architect of his time, generous and he had great understanding. He was for me, the embodiment of what a great man should be. He had enormous capacity. We would talk for hours and hours. And you see, the period of Balenciaga as a youth was the period of all the great couturiers of the epoch".

Balenciaga then opened a bespoke house in Spain visiting Chanel and Schiaparelli in Paris to purchase materials, as a buyer would. "He would tell me, 'Schiaparelli and Chanel have no idea how to make a sleeve, but you must take the essential idea and make clothes that are more comfortable'. Actually the three of us would dine together frequently in Paris. Imagine for a young man to be with Chanel and Balenciaga, out for dinner! The conversation was astonishing". Hubert was motivated by the need to prove to the Master that he could live up to his promise. He worked furiously at his collections, his star shone and the successes kept coming.

Balenciaga rang him one day, to tell him that the house across the road from him, owned by M. Raphael, a Spanish designer also, was up for sale after seventeen years. Hubert laughs as he recalls Balenciaga having told him that in that whole time, neither of the Spanish compatriots had exchanged a single word - Raphael was too in awe of the master and Balenciaga, was himself a very shy man. "They would pass each other on the street and not even nod!

"I said to him: Cristobal, I have no money! And he replied: 'Hubert, money is not a problem, to have opportunities is the best thing'. I told him that the House would be too big for me, and he replied that in two years, I would require three stories. It was true: a couple of years later, I built another two floors. You know, I remember telling Cristobal once, that I regretted not learning the basic dressmaking skills, he smiled and said to me: 'Hubert, anyone can learn the ABC - but taste cannot be learned. It develops slowly and that is the hardest part".

Like his mentor, who was himself impervious to the stringent dictates of fashion time and counsel, Hubert repeatedly presented fashion anomalies that simultaneously beguiled, bewitched and confused the fashion pundits. His 1957 winter collection had yielded the now historic 'Bag' dress which displayed both an aesthetic simplicity and freedom of form in a silhouette that was bewildering to say the least. Hubert also raised the skirt and encouraged women to show off their legs during the day and hint tantalisingly at their presence in the evening in long, Empire style gowns. Despite criticism once again, the style becomes symbolic of a new freedom that will take another decade to become accepted convention. For Audrey, the mellifluous muse, he creates his first perfume, L'interdit which will become in the years to follow, an enduring classic.

Balenciaga meanwhile continued to work for another ten years, closing the doors of his coutue house finally, in 1968. It was a time of great upheaval in fashion - pret-a-porter had become a norm, and according to Hubert, the great master was dissatisfied and unfulfilled long before he ultimately played his swan song. "It was a time of great change and [Balenciaga] had said to me repeatedly that he wanted to close up. His clients would order fifty suits, thirty evening gowns, twenty cocktail dresses and now the number of their orders was reducing dramatically", recalls Hubert. "But the remarkable thing abut him was that he saw his change of lifestyle - he realised that the sumptuous clothes of old were not applicable to the women who were travelling more and more on aeroplanes particularly, and needed to be practical in their clothing. He never wanted to put his name on ready-to wear, he hated the idea of licensing but he had seen it was the future. He told me that I had time to adapt to the new style of living, but he could not and would not".

After the 'New Look' revolution and Dior's subsequent rocketing to fame, Hubert recalls Balenciaga as having the eye and wisdom of a seer when he declared that all fashion eventually comes back to one point, simplicity. He felt that nothing in the 'New Look ' was "true". "If you look closely at the fabrics of the New Look, all the petticoats and skirts were bolstered with linen to give the effect of rigidity. Balenciaga told me that one must always be honest in one's fashion and, most importantly, in the fabrics. 'Fabrics are life', he said, 'and one must always respect the life of the fabric. Christian Dior is more for costume. A woman must walk, and the dress must move in harmony with her, not before nor after her'. That is why Balenciaga's fashion was truly beautiful - the sleeve might be a little different, the button or the length, but always there was the cut, the style and the beauty".

Although haute couture remained his first love, and still does, Givenchy responded to the changing time and, to the shock of some unmitigated purists, he opened the first of the Givenchy Nouvelle Boutiques. Today, they carry his lines in signature Givenchy decor in cities as far afield as Tokyo and New York, Philadelphia and Barcelona, London, Madrid and countless other points on the globe.

But still abiding influence of Balenciaga, even today, governs the directions Hubert de Givenchy will take his name and his influence. Although he is a staggeringly successful businessman, with his design influence now spread over a very wide spectrum, his collections are still the pinnacle of his art, and the notions of quality and elegance in design forbid him from embracing the expansionist economic too literally.

"For a designer to say that he will not create fashion any more because he has nothing to say as an old couturier, is absolutely wrong. You never finish! You know, in each collection you discover something new, a new part of your own creativity, it is more interesting, you learn a new technique, a new cut, a new idea, another idea. Business in fashion is fine, but you cannot get so big that you are unable to protect your quality, your name. There is such a thing as doing too much.

"Fashion in France now is big business and for a designer, the fashion can be one of many products that he or she creates. The name on the article has so much power, particularly for the Japanese who love Givenchy accessories - the shoes; the sunglasses, the stockings, lingerie...If you supervise the whole production herself, if you ensure quality - it is not always easy, but if you have the time and the right staff to help you, then you have the potential to build an empire, but in a nice way..."

He is concerned and uncertain about the future of fashion as he knows it and talks of the "craziness" of some of today's designers whose work he was viewed in magazines. "It is not serious to show dresses that have no construction, too much transparency is absolutely crazy", he says disparagingly. "For one thing, fabric is expensive, workmanship is costly, people do not want to pay for madness.

Yesterday I was sitting on an aeroplane next to a journalist and she was telling me about one designer of the moment who had a huge showing recently. I mentioned to her that nothing was saleable and she replied that he had recreated that collection to attract the press but he had another one, to sell! I had heard that before, but I simply do not understand that! How will people know what it is that he makes? What his real fashion is like?

"I believe in fashion but I don't believe in the publicity that surrounds it. It is important to have a new creativity, new creators but today, when you open a magazine there is too much publicity, very little fashion editorial, even the fashion photography is lacking. Before, fashion photography understood the clothing, explored the cut of the dress, now you often don't see anything. The photographer wants to be a star", he says glacially. "And elegance is missing. You used to be able to see the dress properly, the lighting was perfect, the model was very, very elegant....I don't believe that people think of beauty anymore. Life is so very fast: people don't take time to have fittings for their clothing, to use linen napkins when they eat, to drink from beautiful china, to buy a little bunch of fresh flowers to put in your bathroom - these things are also simple things, refined things.

"To walk in the wood, to see beautiful trees, these things are inspirational to me today, but they are also luxuries. Those young people who are only concerned with making money quickly - the 'Wall Street' boys and girls - are little misguided because to make your life, your career and to do it well, to be proud of what you have done, that is a very gradual process, step-by-step".

His greatest influences today, come from his external world - flowers, great art; like Rothko's usage of colour, the flow and expression of Matisse or an expedition to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art - "it is so well organised", which is a fine compliment from a man whose discipline is legend - literature, furniture..." When I am not working, I stay home and I read and listen to music". He travels extensively ensuring that all is the way he intends it, but he is happiest behind the walls of the property in the French countryside, which he acquired in 1975. Le Jonchet, the beautiful manor home which is both is refuge and the expression of his enchantment with decoration and the art of the garden, is open to very few. "I don't buy a house to give grand receptions, or to impress people - I love beautiful things and I want to place them in surroundings worthy of them", he says.

"I want to create something that will not disappear with me, but outlive me for fifty, or maybe even one hundred years!"

As an acclaimed collector of antique furniture, and quite conversely, modern art, Le Jonchet is his sanctuary, housing his precious collectables and showcasing his decorative art. Fabrics in myriads of colours and designs and always of the finest quality in natural fibres are amply displayed in the airy country home; rural motifs, often 19th century inspired decorate couches and chaises and fine English porcelains grace the tables. Outside, a moat circumnavigates the property and the perfectly ordered grounds which yield, orchards and a park with 15 bridle paths where pheasant, wild game and rabbits frolic, were designed by Hubert according to the blueprints by 'San Giorgio Maggiore'.

His passion and eye for decor and its commercial realisation Givenchy Decoration has had grandiose expression in the furnishings of the Hilton Hotels in Brussels and Singapore, the Vista Hotel in Washington, and in the Indosuez Bank in Tokyo. Givenchy has even applied his design skills to automobiles in the limited edition Ford Continental in the US and a version of the Nissan Laurel in Japan. The latter was sold out before it even appeared in the showrooms.

But throughout the pragmatism of his interests, the evolution of his name and product, the history of Givenchy is irrevocably entwined with the customers who are less patrons than they are relatives of a rarefied description. Humber de Givenchy's clients form a rather elite family, an aristocratic breed that includes in its genealogy the world's most celebrated women and some lesser known, but equally as affecting.

Before Jackie Bouvier was a Kennedy, and then again when she was an Onassis; when Princess Caroline of Monaco celebrated her fifth birthday, Elizabeth Taylor contemplated a new betrothal, when the Duchess of Windsor stepped out and when Greta Garbo stayed in, they were all dressed in Givenchy: "It is like one marvellous family", says its designing patriarch.

Hubert tells of a story that after sometime, is still dear to his heart. A young lady from Mexico wrote to him to tell him that she was getting married to a very rich silver baron who, as part of his engagement present to her, offered to fullfil her three dearest wishes. The first was to marry in Venice, the second, to dine at Maxim's and the third was to have her wedding dress made by Givenchy. Hubert fulfilled the final wish. Sadly her husband died a mere five years later, but each year at Christmas she sends the couturier a gift, and reciprocally, he visits her when in Mexico.

Although today, Hubert is as active and creative in his design as he ever was, he is aware that he is possibly one of the last of the great couturiers and with him, will cease a vital lineage that began with Balenciaga and was passed on to Givenchy. As in the guilds of old, where the master taught his protege and son on ensuring that craftsmanship became an innate artform, respected and expected, Givenchy would dearly love to complete his link in the pre-destined chain. It is, sadly at this point, a tenuous firmament. Although he is not searching expressly for a new Givenchy, he is looking for a young stylist who has the understanding, patience and the quality.

"All that I learned from Balenciaga those many years ago, is still very relevant and valuable. What I really would like to happen is to find that someone one day, who I perceive would really understand those messages and to that person I will give my 'recipes', he laughs, then is suddenly serious again, "and Balenciaga's legacy. It would be a real dommage to lose that knowledge. I want to find that one person, who understands the real fashion, who knows that elegance is timeless and that all fashion will go back to it.

"I am a rich man in having learned those things, and Balenciaga was so pleased at my interest. He gave me people from his own House to help me and two of them are still with me, although they did not want to go then. He told them that one day, he would close his House and they would be out of jobs. "But", he said, 'Givenchy will still be there".

Hubert de Givenchy's time is a time of quintessential elegance perhaps out of vogue in the fashion pugilism of today, but never outdated, because as the great master once told him, everything in fashion time comes back eventually to one point - simplicity and elegance. And if Hubert de Givenchy is a master of anything, it is those two definitive words around which the vocabulary of style revolves and returns. When fashion slang and colloquial expression have faded into demode as is inevitable by the nature of the euphemistic beast, all that is left is simplicity and elegance. And that, is what everyone wants to wear. Ready or not.