Carven

Origin: 1945, Paris, France

Designer: Guillaume Henry

Field: Womenswear

Bio:

Carmen de Tommaso founded her fashion house in 1945 and named it Carven. Since its creation in 1945, the Carven fashion house has promoted a particularly democratic vision of fashion. A woman who was free and unshackled by convention, Madame Carven entered the rarefied world of 1940’s haute couture as a complete novice, bringing with her a freshness and spontaneity of style that resembled the daily lives of women of the time. She was the first to offer accessible luxury and to capture the spirit of the moment through her simple and refined designs, inspired by Parisian chic where style took precedence over ostentation.

The new owners of the Carven brand name have ended the Haute Couture collection so as to launch a contemporary and affordable women’s ready-to-wear collection. Since the beginning, the Carven house has had a very Parisian and democratic view of fashion design.
Spontaneous, light, simple and enthusiastic, the most impulsive fashion designer of her time, Madame Carven has always accomplished things on the basis of her love, her convictions and desire to play.
She was the first to make clothes for petite women (like herself); she removed bra straps thus designing half-cups and her dresses were made from ethnic fabrics brought back from her many faraway journeys around the world.

Her perfumes were born out of that same unbridled spirit: utilizing, for the first time, raw materials such as chypre for “Ma Griffe” and the vetiver root for her men’s eau de toilette.

2010, CARVEN OPENS A NEW CHAPTER

From the couture years, Carven has kept its heritage. It lives on in the spirit of perfect design and choice materials. Today, the house offers ready-to-wear that is both inspired and accessible.
At the helm of this first spring-summer collection is designer Guillaume Henry. After graduating from Beaux Arts in Paris, the Duperre School and the Institut Français de la Mode (IFM), he joined the house of Givenchy in 2002, as a senior stylist and first assistant to Riccardo Tisci for ready-to-wear. In 2005 he joined Paule Ka, where he remained for three years before his appointment as artistic director for Carven’s first women’s ready-to-wear collection.

Having mastered Carven’s history and its DNA, Guillaume Henry now opens a new chapter based on chic, femininity and simplicity. There is nothing ostentatious about the collection, just a distinct taste for contrast.

Style: The Carven spirit is fresh, lively and elegant. 
The future of this illustrious fashion house is in the hands of Guillaume Henry, who will adapt it to his guise. 
He is the guardian of the heritage of the Couture years, epitomised by the precision production of a garment and a judicious choice of fabrics. 
With its chic, feminine and pared-down fashion, free from ostentation, the House today offers an inspired and accessible ready-to-wear collection. The silhouette is young and modern, the cuts precise and often short. The dress code grants pride of place to blends of styles and materials, with witty mixes of pure, rigorous and fluid, floaty lines. A new elegance for day and night illustrates the subtle yet audacious new allure of Carven. “It’s about travel without getting too literal, built on nerdy collegiate chic with proper tailoring »,  ”Bourgeois, but with a nasty side” is how the designer described the collection’s vibe.

SS12:

Carven dresses always come with a wink: a lace inset that zigzags underneath the neckline, cutouts below the bust, removable collars or dickeys. The tailoring is well done, but cheeky, too, particularly when it comes to those high-waisted shorts. For Spring, Henry spun a folkloric tale. Leather harnesses on top of dresses or underneath jackets recalled lederhosen; colorful prints inspired by native embroideries appeared on baby dolls, shirtdresses, and a striking off-the-shoulder pleated look. (Nicole Phelps for style.com)