Creative Director Clare Waight Keller’s Resort 2020 collection for Givenchy is created from glimpses of the Thames, Chelsea gardens, the Mall, and then the Seine, boulevards, and the Eiffel Tower, merging formality and sophistication.

“I always have core staples: great T-shirts and trenches, well-cut coats and a really good pair of boots,” she says, “but also elements which are a bit more frivolous and fanciful, because you always want a joyous part in the way you dress.”

Her travel tips are manifest in pulled-together solutions for the fast-moving scene changes which face working women: a great black poplin dress, loose-ish but chic; a beige jumpsuit; a generous trench with a black faille ribbon bisecting the back; and a series of sharp thoughts about applied tailoring. She pulls out a classic French blazer, emblazoned with doubled rows of mismatched gilt souvenir buttons.

“What I’ve seen so much around me, and with my colleagues and friends, are the challenges of dress today when people travel so much,” she says.

The collection featured a fitted black sleeveless midi, with two flattering rows of brass buttons graduating inwards from hip to waist, and a red stand collar not unlike a guard’s uniform. For eveningwear, there were packable “hybrid cocktailwear” in the form of a knit and lace dress in peach and pink, and occasion pieces with frilled, pleated upstanding necklines—something Hubert de Givenchy did.

Givenchy is embedded in prints and jacquards, and stamped in black and white across zip closures or logo strips on shirt fronts and Keller is looking to put her own spin on things.