Celebrating “Le Grand Hubert”—Inside the Givenchy Auction at Christie’s Paris

In addition to the Christie’s auction, Hubert de Givenchy’s style has inspired a tribute across town, at the Galerie Kugel, a bijou of an antiques gallery on the Left Bank. There, brothers Alexis and Nicolas Kugel, who worked with Monsieur de Givenchy for more than 30 years and penned the preface for the Christie’s sale catalogue, have reconfigured a salon in the style of the couturier’s green living room, anchored by hallmarks of his taste.

Though some items here were owned by Givenchy—a couple of vases, a pair of Venetian mirrors, a Boulle armoire that once served as a backdrop for a portrait of Audrey Hepburn—the brothers said that the aim was celebration, and not everything is available for purchase. “Givenchy was the most important furniture collector in Paris, with the most beautifu home, and he was all about harmony and elegance à la française,” commented Nicolas Kugel. “Nothing escaped him. He had an architect’s sense of proportion,” he said, adding that the gallery has worked with all of couture’s greats. “They had the kind of lifestyle that no longer exists today—and I can promise you that none of them was thinking about sneakers,” he quipped.

Back at Christie’s, Zoe de Givenchy, the couturier’s niece by marriage, observed, “For Hubert, too much was never elegant. We think of him as le grand Hubert, this renegade of his time, but he was so graceful and humble,” she went on, describing the little mementos of friendship that live on at Le Jonchet, for example a poem written by Hepburn on a boarding pass envelope, tucked away in a drawer. “He had a golden heart, and he saw the heart in things. Something’s value was always secondary to provenance, appreciating who made it, how and why it was made, and the story it tells,” she said, adding that the couturier helped her forge relationships with artisans for her own homeware collection, which incorporates motifs by Hubert himself. “Le grand goût français—great French taste—is almost in the blood,” she said. “It would never require a decorator.”