[2] Hubert James Taffin de Givenchy was born on 20 February 1927 in Beauvais, Oise,[3][4][5] into a Protestant noble family.

[4][10] Later he did designs for Robert Piguet and Lucien Lelong (1946) – working alongside the still-unknown Pierre Balmain and Christian Dior.

[4][10] In 1952, he opened his own design house at the Plaine Monceau in Paris,[4][5] concentrating on versatile separates in shirting cotton.

[11] Later, he named his first collection "Bettina Graziani" for Paris's top model at the time, who had provided indispensable support and publicity for him.

[5][17] Givenchy sought inspiration not only from the lofty settings of haute couture but also in such avant-garde environments as Limbo, the store in Manhattan's East Village.

[18] Givenchy's notable clients also included Donna Marella Agnelli, Lauren Bacall,[3] Ingrid Bergman, Countess Mona von Bismarck, Countess Cristiana Brandolini d'Adda, Sunny von Bülow, Renata Tebaldi, Maria Callas, Capucine, Marlene Dietrich,[3] Daisy Fellowes, Greta Garbo, Gloria Guinness, Dolores Guinness, Aimee de Heeren,[14] Jane Holzer, Grace Kelly,[14] Princess Salimah Aga Khan, Rachel Lambert Mellon, Sophia Loren, Jeanne Moreau, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,[14] Empress Farah Pahlavi, Babe Paley, Lee Radziwill, Hope Portocarrero, Comtesse Jacqueline de Ribes, Nona Hendryx, Baroness Pauline de Rothschild, Frederica von Stade, Baroness Gaby Van Zuylen van Nijevelt, Diana Vreeland, Betsey Whitney, Baroness Sylvia de Waldner, the Duchess of Windsor, Haitian first lady Michèle Duvalier and Jayne Wrightsman.

[29][30] The same year, he felt confident enough with his stature to present his collections weeks after almost all other designers showed theirs, requiring a second trip to Paris for the press.

[31] He created the iconic 'balloon coat' and the 'baby doll' dress in 1958,[32][33] making innovative contributions to the geometric seaming and experimental construction becoming prevalent at the time.

"[58][59][60] There were signs of this change in position as early as 1963, when he rejected the fashion world's adoption of multiple heights of women's boots,[61] sticking instead to staid pumps, and attempted to reintroduce a fitted princess silhouette when waistless shift and trapeze shapes were the strongest trend.

[95][96][97][98] He even joined other cocktail-set designers in showing the occasional above-the-knee skirt,[99][100] newly acceptable to him now that it was dressy-looking instead of 1960s-casual,[101] a tendency that increased during the eighties.

In October 2014, a retrospective exhibition featuring ninety-five of his designed pieces took place at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain.