For Givenchy's Fall/Winter 2008 women's ready-to-wear collection, Riccardo Tisci has taken his inspiration from Latin America. He has combined Latin joie de vivre with his gothic aesthetic.

Latin savoir faire redefines French elegance in sharply tailored silhouettes in this new collection. The key look is skinny long legs with a surfeit of volume on top. In homage to the Latin love of ruffles, frills and pleats have been reinterpreted in lace, cotton and poplin.

Worn with pantsuits, lace provides a feminine contrast to the collection’s masculine tailoring. Softer feminine shapes include a tone-on-tone pale aqua dress, tight at the waist with a fluted skirt finished with ribbon embroidery, glass beads and hand-embroidered eyelets, inspired by a turn-of-the-century corset, said an official.

Executed in a mostly monochrome color palette, the collection’s black and white symbolises the duality of hard and soft, history and modernity, which has come to represent the brand.-TradeArabia News Service