History in the dressmaking

John Galliano, new boy at Givenchy, resisted the temptation to put on an alternative catwalk show. Marion Hume watched him reinvent classic couture style

John Galliano offered a cavalcade of haute couture at his Givenchy debut on Sunday. His show, staged in a suburban football stadium transformed into fashion fantasy land for a few hours, was a tribute to the skills of "les petits mains", the behind-the-scenes craftspeople who make haute couture so superior to run-of-the-mill clothes. The difference between couture - which is made for every individual customer - and mass-manufactured ready-to-wear is best demonstrated in dresses that drape as if poured from molten metal and tailoring that precisely flatters a female form. The very best of haute couture is so technically accomplished that sometimes it seems to have been made by magical elfin fingers.

Galliano, the son of a London plumber, has long dreamt of being able to harness the unique talents of les petits mains to create his designs. On Sunday night his dreams came true - huge ball gowns, structured black tailored smoking suits, featherweight frilled blouses and sack dresses (after Balenciaga) hanging straight from the shoulders. Each demonstrated skills of construction not available to most designers.

For Galliano has inherited the workrooms of Hubert de Givenchy, the 68- year-old couturier who retired last July. The new boy at the House of Givenchy made the best possible use of the behind-the-scenes talent on which much of Givenchy's 43-year history has rested.

The atmosphere in the football stadium before the show was one of breathless excitement. But the applause after 50 outfits had been revealed was not as thunderous as expected. The fashion world had hoped that wild boy Galliano would set haute couture ablaze. Instead, he had the good sense to take a middle road, combining signatures of the House of Givenchy with his own extraordinary style, rather than going all out for in-your-face sensation.

His was the best solution to a very tricky fashion conundrum: uniquely, Hubert de Givenchy, whom Galliano has replaced, is still alive to stand in judgement on what is now done in his name.

Galliano had worked hard to absorb and re-issue much of the best of Givenchy's life work, but he left out the most obvious Givenchy pieces - the Sabrina dresses, the Breakfast at Tiffany's little black numeros that long ago made a young man called Hubert de Givenchy the sensation that Galliano is today.

Instead, today's young man turned to the Bettina blouse that Givenchy invented in 1952; he took the drapery, the bows, the pin-stripes that have always been a quiet part of the Givenchy repertoire and introduced them to a new audience. A black draped crepe de chine column with an arc of fabric secured at the neck by a single huge rose was pure Givenchy fused with the essence of Galliano, and was outstanding.

The show romped through fashion history. Here were ball gowns reminiscent of Worth - an Englishman who founded haute couture in the first place. Here were clothes that referred back to the Twenties, the Thirties, the strict tailoring of the Forties, the prom dresses of the Fifties that women today might, all the same, want to buy.

There was no amazing, opulent bride swooping past like a galleon in full sail to bring the house down at the end of the show. Galliano resisted too-overblown theatrics (at which he is a proven master) although the show did open with a "Princess and the Pea" tableau involving a mountain of mattresses and two gigantic gowns.

For this first Givenchy show Galliano wanted to press home the point that he has been chosen first and foremost to create clothes. What we saw on Sunday night was the beginning of a career in which the best is yet to come.

Galliano still has much to learn (and he knows it) from the masters of the craft. One of them is the Italian Valentino, who showed on Monday in Paris at L'Opera Garnier. Valentino's sugar-fondant frills are perhaps not for all tastes, but they are made so immaculately that at times it seems almost impossible that they could have been created by human hands. Valentino, who brings his whole workroom team to Paris, where they set up shop within the Ritz hotel, never forgets that clothes at this price are meant to flatter women and not be overcome by fantasy.