Sarah Burton’s Givenchy menswear campaign spotlights Don McCullin and Don Letts

Sarah Burton used her first Givenchy menswear campaign to make a clear case for character over hype. Shot by Juergen Teller, the images put Don McCullin, Don Letts and Danny Fox in front of the lens as themselves, with Burton reaching for men whose careers already carry weight: McCullin as a photographer, Letts as a filmmaker, DJ and former Clash figure, and Fox as a painter.

The teaser images went up on billboards around Paris on Wednesday, June 24, 2026, just ahead of Burton’s first dedicated menswear presentation for Givenchy, scheduled for Thursday, June 25, during Paris Fashion Week Men’s Spring/Summer 2027. In a season crowded with polish and performance, Burton’s choice felt deliberately steadier, more tailored to longevity than to a flash of runway momentum.

Burton said the three men chose the looks they wanted to wear, a process she compared to “very much like an old couture or bespoke way of working.” That detail matters. It turns the campaign into something closer to a fitting than a photo shoot, with clothing shaped around the wearer’s instinct and authority. Burton also said she wanted a multidisciplinary cast of men who represented something to her and were experts in their fields, which explains why the campaign reads less like celebrity casting and more like a study in masculine credibility.

The clothes reinforce that mood. Among the most visible pieces were a vivid yellow satin coat and a brown bomber jacket embroidered with chrysanthemums, both of them loud enough to register on a Paris billboard but still grounded in the kind of outerwear that can hold a wardrobe together. Teller’s stripped-back images leave the focus on faces, texture and posture, so the clothes feel lived in rather than styled into submission.

The campaign extends a portrait-led approach Burton has already been building at Givenchy. Her spring 2026 work paired Rooney Mara and Paul Simonon with photographer Collier Schorr, and Givenchy has framed that body of work as a Portrait Series. Burton’s menswear push follows her women’s debut in March 2025, a show that leaned on precision tailoring and archive references, including Hubert de Givenchy’s 1952 codes. Since joining Givenchy in 2024 after 13 years at Alexander McQueen, Burton has become the house’s eighth designer and only its second female couturier, and this campaign suggests her menswear will be built on the same terms: exacting, personality-driven and designed to outlast a trend cycle.