GQ Names Riccardo Tisci as its 2012 Designer of the Year

GQ has bestowed the honor of Designer of the Year on 38-year-old wunderkind Riccardo Tisci – who has been lauded as both a saving grace and creative luminary for Givenchy. Playfully dubbing him the man who “got Kanye West to wear a skirt,” the in-depth profile finds writer Molly Young traveling to Paris where she linked up with Tisci at Givenchy’s offices on Rue Montaigne. While a choice excerpt appears below, head over to GQ to read the entire three-page editorial in its entirety.

In person, Tisci is swarthily handsome but untidily groomed, with a little paunch. If you’ve seen Tisci’s somberly erotic runway output, you might picture some kind of holy weirdo sketching by oil lamp behind the scenes. But in person the designer is a sweetheart. He mentions his eight elder sisters constantly, and no wonder: Tisci’s primary trait is what can only be described as “younger-brother-ness”—coddled sweetness plus warmth plus the boyish quality of being excitable, which all makes a great antivenom for pretentiousness. Once, when the iPhone recording of our conversation accidentally plays back in my pocket, he points to my pants and says, “That’s me!”