Lee Alexander McQueen had been the head designer at Givenchy for roughly a year when he hired Sarah Burton straight after her graduation in 1997 from London’s Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

As womenswear designer for the incendiary British talent’s signature label, those were her first brushes with the storied French couture house.

Accustomed to McQueen’s higgledy-piggledy studio in London — a warren of chilly rooms stacked with plastic tubs full of patterns, trims and whatnot — Burton recalled the gust of glamor she felt when she stepped into Givenchy ’s sunny, grandiose headquarters on the Avenue George V.

It was also her first exposure to an in-house atelier, cementing her and her boss’ devotion to the art and craft of making clothes.

“I remember how much Lee

See Full Page