Celine (Q4057)
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French luxury fashion house
- CELINE
- Celine S.A.
- Céline
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Celine |
French luxury fashion house |
|
Statements
2005
creative director
2017
creative director
senior designer
2009
ready-to-wear designer
intern
worked in ready-to-wear atelier
After 25 years as a fashion designer, Hedi Slimane has built up a rich discography of menswear: a back catalogue that continues to influence progressive masculine dressing today. Ever since Pierre Bergé named him as creative director of menswear at Rive Gauche Homme at Yves Saint Laurent (as it was then known) back in 1997, Slimane has used fashion as a device to create a specifically distinct form of masculine portraiture. What makes it so distinct is a combination of his chosen conceptual lens, music, plus the filter of androgyny that inflected his street photography many years before his fashion career began. His fashion dialect crystalized when, during his time at Dior Homme in the early 2000s, he had moved from Paris to Berlin and begun observing the subcultures that so compel him there. He later moved to London during Camden’s second wave of peak indie rumpus, which further inflected that Dior period.By the time Slimane returned to Saint Laurent (as it would then be known) between 2012 and 2016 he had followed his reportorial urge to Los Angeles. Shortly before exiting the house for a second time in 2016 he said toL’Uomo Vogueof his work: “You keep doing what you always did with authenticity, determination, and dedication regardless of forgery and imitation. Those things always end up getting sorted out, one way or another. You own it, it’s your trademark, there is, besides a record for it.”Last night in Paris Slimane extended that record with his latest collection for Celine, the house he joined in 2018. The show was held at the Palais de Tokyo, more recently a venue inextricably associated with Rick Owens, but also one previously explored in fashion by Slimane. In January 2002 he presented the Dior Homme (as it was then known) fall 2002 ‘Reflexion’ show here. Back then Slimane’s specially commissioned soundtrack was by the French electronica outfit Ready Made FC, while this season it was New York’s new-new wave band Gustaf.Back in 2002, Bernard Arnault, Bergé, and Karl Lagerfeld were on Slimane’s front row. Last night, sadly, only Arnault—who according to those sitting near him took photos of almost every look—was present to see Slimane’s return to the venue. Also in attendance were Lisa from Blackpink and V from BTS, whose fans followed them in droves. The collection they saw encapsulated Slimane’s ongoing exploration of the new wave, with the sub-genres he nodded to spanning all three city-defined stages of lifetime world tour.
In 2002 Slimane observed: “I’m always thinking that something will come along to destroy whatever credo I have.” Two decades later, he continues to keep the faith.
27 June 2022
Hedi Slimane brought the menswear summer of neo-rave to a flying FMX stunt-biker conclusion with an action-and-item packed Celine show recorded by drones somewhere on the Archipel des Embiez in the south of France. On a black runway set up with freestyle motocross ramps and jumps, teams of shirtless Honda-riding boys leapt and arced against the Mediterranean sky. The location is apparently not far from where Slimane lives outside St.Tropez, and this was Slimane on home territory in more ways than one: capturing his endless obsession with male teen energy, studding the collection with multiple art collabs, and wrapping it all up to the beat of a mesmeric looped soundtrack.The FMX bikers belong to a community that invented its renegade free-riding sport in the hills of California in the early ’90s—Slimane has been documenting them since 2011, when he came across them while he was living in L.A. This time, he commissioned and co-produced the music with Izzy Camina, intersecting the long, slouching march of a black-leather and silver-sparkled collection with souvenir slogan T-shirts and prints made by 14 of the emerging artists he collects and promotes. Posted underneath the film came three lines captioning the collection’s title: Cosmic Cruiser / Riding a new age / Restless dreams of a cosmic team.Since the pandemic hit, Slimane has shifted his Celine productions into the open air and into spectacular French locations. Wherever he lands, though, be it a Formula One racetrack, a chateau in the Loire valley, or this time, on a rocky Med coastline, there’s always the same, recognizable atmosphere, the romantic-erotic stamp Slimane puts on a world inhabited by young men, always spiked with his laser-eyed channeling of a relevant moment picked up from youth culture. His meeting of motocross daredevilry and neo-rave frippery nailed the current summer of ’21 teen spirit—a full-ranging breakdown of XXXL elephant jeans, mirrored bug sunglasses, scaled-up bombers, tour jackets, and draped tuxes. Black capes flew over sexy black leathers; sequins, crystals, and silver western boots glinted.A boy lost on his own Cosmic Cruiser trip officiated as the sun went down in a sunset-embroidered poncho: a hedonistic, freedom-celebrating finale for a back-to-clubs, back-to-raving Gen Z audience that’s at long, long last out on the loose.Editor’s note: The collection images have been removed.
27 July 2021
Hedi Slimane’s Celine video for fall feels so like taking an immersive course in the offhand art of French dressing that it makes you want to hit replay again and again. Every item of the Parisian wardrobe is paced out and remixed in that on-point manner that has made French girl-style the envy of the world. Never overdone, but perfectly self-aware, with that good-bad hair that looks as if it might have been washed a couple of days ago.It’s that knack of pairing something posh that might have belonged to your mom or dad—a Chanel-ish jacket, an oversize herringbone coat—with something casual. Of throwing on a tweed hacking jacket or trench coat with exactly the right cut of bashed-up old jeans. Of knowing that a naval jacket and a black tuxedo are always cool. All this has been passed down through French generations since at least Jane Birkin’s heyday; what makes the difference is Slimane’s exacting eye for timely proportions. The way he’ll toss in Gen Z relevance by inserting asymmetric crop tops here and there into looks that actually women of any generation could easily wear.The fact that the show was set amongst the breathtaking gardens of the Château Vaux-le-Vicomte, some 55 kilometers outside Paris, only adds to Slimane’s conjuring of haute French identity—Celine’s modern girls walking casually past the exquisite formal fountains and pools landscaped centuries ago by André Le Nôtre. It’s landed as a sequel to the last Celine menswear show, in which Slimane’s young chevaliers roamed the battlements of the Château Chambord in the Loire valley. Having the keys to the castles of France is surely a brand power play, but here’s a thought: Has Hedi Slimane turned unexpectedly romantic, wistful even, during the pandemic?There was a line in his show notes, typographically smooshed together, which alluded to a “utopian parade and melancholic daydream of youth interrupted.” It ran after quotes from Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud—France’s decadent, libertine poets eternally famed for exalting the excess and pain of misspent youth. In a time when parties, clubs, festivals, and events have been banned for so long, the show ended with a shift to a fairy-tale scenario. A girl in a glittering, hand-beaded crinoline stood looking toward the chateau with fireworks exploding in the sky. There was a deer by her side, a tear on her cheek. There’ll be nowhere for the princess to wear that crinoline yet—definitely not in locked-down France right now.
But Slimane and Celine are clearly dreaming of that day.Editor’s note: The collection images have been removed.
14 April 2021
Flying the flag of Celine Homme, a young chevalier gallops on his black stallion toward the Château de Chambord, followed by a posse of fellow knights on white chargers. On the fantastical turreted rooftops stands a lone blond princeling, wrapped melancholically in a black cloak and a high-necked white frilled-neck Renaissance blouse. And so begins the dramatic unfolding of Hedi Slimane’s “Teen Knight Poem,” his “Nouveau Romantique” rallying call to the teen spirit of 2021.Youth might leap to the conclusion that the scenery is some kind of CGI-created dream castle—but not at all. The Château de Chambord is a hunting lodge in the Loire valley built by the “Chevalier King” Francois I in the 16th century, a monument wreathed in French Renaissance history, chosen as a narrative background for a collection balanced between a flight of medievalist escapism and Slimane’s laser-keen contemporary focus on products to get contemporary guys buying.Slimane “fell in love with” the Château de Chambord because of its spectacular black-and-white architecture. We know about the authentically real, extravagantly haute setting because of the unusually explanatory press notes he sent out this season. There’s even a credit for the horse Goya, the “17-year-old Black Andalou stallion,” ridden by “Raoul, son and nephew of friends of Hedi.” And a footnote detailing how Slimane sent the sound of a “French military drum march” as a keynote to The Loom, his British musician friends Jack and George Barnett, to inset as the beat of this season’s house-style mesmerically looping Celine soundtrack.The trope—young boys bravely clad in various references to armor—had an elation about it. A conscious elevation of intent too. Whereas last season, Slimane had gone down to e-boy teen-bedroom level, now he was up to high culture—inspired by portraits of the court of Francois I and placing an explicit emphasis on extreme French luxury. Broad-shouldered leather gilets and oversized knits sounded a kind of simultaneous clarion call to ’80s pop culture and medieval battle gear and tabard-like silhouettes, also a neat way of circling back to Slimane-invented skinny-legged territory. Nouveau romantic dangly earrings, studded knit helmet-beanies, and metal-tipped Chelsea boots piled on the accessory inventory—some random yeti ski boots too.
Luxury, though: When all’s said and done, Celine is a luxury French house, and—never mind the spinning out of accessible hoodies and unmissable logos (which there were also aplenty)—that reputation has to be upheld too. Slimane’s notes held his answer to that. The embellishments in stones, crystal, and chain mail glinting among this collection were “realized in Parisian couture and embroidery ateliers”; the final look took 23 embroiderers more than 1,300 hours of work. Not much difference there from the labor lavished on the ceremonial garb in the 16th century, when you think about it. Are there neo-princes out there in the world today who will go for that? Probably.Editor’s note: The collection images have been removed.
8 February 2021
Since the summer of 2020, when he showed his Dancing Boy men’s collection—an ode to e-boys—on a Formula One track in the South of France, Hedi Slimane has switched his approach to documentary mode. The second half of what he called (in an email) a “portrait of a generation”—this one for girls—was also filmed in a sports venue, the Stade Louis II in Monaco. “With this collection Hedi wants to show, through the youth [and] optimism, the hope [in] this uncertain time.”Styling and restyling the bourgeois codes of what Celine used to stand for is how he started at this house. Now, interrupting them with how they might be rehandled by French Gen Z on the street—or at home—is the name of his game.She’s “always the Parisian but with a new energy—she listens to rap/hip-hop music”—like the track by Princess Nokia, which looped hypnotically as the models strode the circuit, their Celine-logo baseball caps and bucket hats pulled down, hands thrust in the pockets of their jeans, shorts, and ’80s style blousons.The timeless bits of luxury fashion—like the tailored blazer, the glamorous sequined dress, and the ladylike Sulky bag—are still centrally represented: Slimane isn’t about to give up on plying that wardrobe. The difference is his sharp-eyed assessment of the way that the granddaughters of Celine’s earlier customers will likely give the posh stuff a complete dressing down. Gone are the old tropes of proper, high-heel polish. This generation will only wear flats—anything from sneakers to fluffy bedroom slides to hiking boots and Wellington boots—put crop tops under blazers, throw on nylon jackets over loose-fitting sparkly dresses and track pants under jackets.It’s a rewritten language of style that Slimane aims to be read by youth globally. The parting shot of the film soared up through the roof of the Monegasque stadium, switched to a darkened sky, and culminated with a view of the earth seen from space. What did it signify? That our planet is beautiful and we’re still lucky to be alive on it—maybe something like that. For the anxious times that all kids are living through, that seemed to be Slimane’s small gesture of hope.Editor’s note: The collection images have been removed.
26 October 2020
Hedi Slimane’s long-teased collection “The Dancing Boy” crossed the starting line for viewers onceline.com, Instagram, and YouTube today with a long drone shot hovering over the deserted Circuit Paul Ricard motor racing track in the South of France. Cameras then zoomed in to track solitary boys walking the Formula One lanes—the opener to a film made by Slimane as his salute to how teens in bedrooms all over the world have been posting solitary TikTok performances during the pandemic.Both clothes and atmosphere read as consolation for all the festivals that didn’t happen in 2020—and a celebration of an unputdownable generation that has forged its own mass youth movement and overnight stars through the new medium that Donald Trump hates most. Subtitled “A teen romance,” Slimane described the show (which was filmed on July 19) in a follow-up email as “a ‘documentary’ collection spanning E boys and current skate culture” and “a candid portrait of a generation that took advantage of the confinement to assert itself and emancipate itself creatively.” It was their music too—a Celine-commissioned 15-minute edit of 22-year-old Canadian rapper Tiagz’s TikTok-famed “They Call Me Tiago (Her Name Was Margo).”As a designer with a lifelong obsession with layering youth references of the past into his work, Slimane was in his element, finally being able to riff off the energy—and the wardrobes—of a live subculture. The whole thing had been designed in St. Tropez “well before March,” the concept triggered by Slimane’s signing of TikTok teen idol Noen Eubanks as a face of the Celine campaign last year. An air of deliberately unaffected, grungy, thrown-together casualness—“the new adolescent codes” as Slimane put it—was forensically observed and replicated: oversized cardigans, printed jersey skater shorts, beanies, tiger-print sequined trackies, varsity jackets, sleazy ’80s patchwork blousons, giant knitted ponchos—and was that a pair of polka-dot pajama bottoms in there?Hearing that this pileup of pieces that might’ve been found on a kid’s bedroom floor is not exactly what grown-ups perceive as the output of a luxury goods house would be music to Slimane’s ears. Annoying the elders is his delight. Yet he’s a designer who cannily has it both ways.
While there’s so much that’s accessible in the way of accessories—and bold Celine logos on bags make a direct pitch to the money-spinning hypebeast market—Slimane’s signature tailoring was slipped in there too: a suit with pleated high-waist trousers, a gold tiger-patterned sequined rock star jacket. Anyone looking for signs of elevated Parisian handcraft might detect it in the neon glow-in-the-dark palm trees embroidered on the backs of a couple of jackets: “A nod to the LED lights that invariably decorate the bedrooms of teenagers the world over,” said Slimane.Largely, though, it was a show set to appeal to a different (gigantic) audience in what now feels like a very different era from the one in which Celine showed its last physical fashion show to that traditionally packed tent of industry insiders in March. Yet it was also interlaced with hope and energy: Maybe one day next summer all those boys will be out dancing together again at raves and festivals, looking just like this.Editor’s note: The collection images have been removed.
29 July 2020
Hedi Slimane’s passion for the dress codes of the Parisian bourgeoisie of the 1970s continued unabated into fall 2020. Shedding a rare chink of light on something personal, the enigmatic creative director dedicated the collectiona ma mèrein his show notes. What did his mother wear when Slimane was growing up in Paris? Was it something like the idealized Celine collection he sent out this time? That wouldn’t be surprising, because everyone did back then. Slimane was born in 1968, the momentous year of the uprising of French young people against the government, and was too young to have participated, but he would have seen the style of the ’70s through the observant eyes of a young teenager—exactly the age of the boys and girls who roamed his runway this (and indeed every) season.Slimane used another throwback, late-’60s term for the collection:unisex. What the super-skinny boys with their dandy rock-star coats, suits, black jeans, and black leathers were wearing is available for girls, too. Look closely—it’s always revealing to look at Slimane’s work in its every detail—and it was obvious that they were wearing identical silk and chiffon foulard blouses to the ones that many of the girls had on. The difference between then and now is that both genders can also carry the Sulky handbag, dating from 1966, which Slimane has reintroduced from the Celine archive.The revival of bourgeois classics that is reverberating through fashion right now was set off by Slimane with his second collection for Celine. Where others subvert and dissect it (like John Galliano) or restyle it (say, Burberry or Victoria Beckham), Slimane continues serving it up straight. Owning it in every line of pleated knee-length silk dress, every culotte, cape, and platform shoe, is Slimane’s thing. Essentially, it’s the look he has assimilated from Yves Saint Laurent as an indivisible part of his own identity. His first job was designing menswear for Saint Laurent while Yves was still alive. Maybe Slimane’s adamant adherence to his canon of design is a subconscious act of torch carrying in his memory.But repetition and consistency is also part of 21st-century branding—and there’s no one in fashion like Slimane for seeing that through to the nth degree. This season there were glinting, gorgeous highlights: gold-encrusted tunics over pants; velvet maxiskirts embroidered with gold and silver leaves; and a really sensational trio of slim, simple evening dresses.
And for boys? Everything to fulfill every fantasy of rock-star glamour—the dream Slimane has been making come true his whole career.
28 February 2020
Part of Hedi Slimane’s power as an artistic director is his concision: the ability with a mere few pieces to overhaul not just a brand, but also large swaths of fashion. Presented in Paris in July amidst the haute couture shows, this pre-collection was as succinct as the showroom in which it was housed was vast. The Celine look is a boyishly cut blazer, a ruffle-neck button-down, a pair of high-waisted flared jeans, and deceptively humble white trainers, as efficient—and sophisticated—as a code. Labels up and down the market will try to crack it.That said, Slimane is also a completist, and no detail is too small to merit his attention, as the exacting decor of the house’s first-ever parfumerie, recently unveiled on Paris’s Rue Saint-Honoré, suggests. Here, he turned his eye to delicate ID bracelets and even daintier chain necklaces and stud earrings. Note the gold frames on the aviator shades the models wear in more than half of the pictures, a millimeter or two thicker than the other guys’ sunglasses. Do your favorite jeans suddenly feel incomplete without a gold link and leather belt? Slimane and his Celine redo are the reasons why.Editor’s note: The collection images have been removed.
8 November 2019
Why do the ’60s and ’70s keep coming up in this season’s collections? For Hedi Slimane, the subject is less a matter of tackling the current socio-political zeitgeist than staying true to what he’s always done. This Celine collection was home territory for the designer, and he systematically focused on making a wardrobe, bootcut jean by bootcut jean, blazer by blazer, pleated silk dress by culotte by aviator sunglass and hippy jacket.For Spring, Slimane took the theme back to circa 1974, when Celine was a destination store for the discreet French bourgeoisie, selling such things as silk separates, horse-bit-decorated bags and shoes. All of these were present and correct, expanded into a repertoire which touched streetwear at one level, and glittering gold lamé and embroidered dresses at the other.The point is that Parisian girls were the envy of the world, with all their nonchalance and undone hair, and their ability to tie a scarf. Slimane’s merchandising and image-making strengths make it as much about capitalizing on that picture in a globalized world as it is about fashion itself.Many have followed in his footsteps, but there’s no rival to his forensic, granular knowledge of how to make every element play its part.
27 September 2019
Hedi Slimane brought the menswear summer of neo-rave to a flying FMX stunt-biker conclusion with an action-and-item packed Celine show recorded by drones somewhere on the Archipel des Embiez in the south of France. On a black runway set up with freestyle motocross ramps and jumps, teams of shirtless Honda-riding boys leapt and arced against the Mediterranean sky. The location is apparently not far from where Slimane lives outside St.Tropez, and this was Slimane on home territory in more ways than one: capturing his endless obsession with male teen energy, studding the collection with multiple art collabs, and wrapping it all up to the beat of a mesmeric looped soundtrack.The FMX bikers belong to a community that invented its renegade free-riding sport in the hills of California in the early ’90s—Slimane has been documenting them since 2011, when he came across them while he was living in L.A. This time, he commissioned and co-produced the music with Izzy Camina, intersecting the long, slouching march of a black-leather and silver-sparkled collection with souvenir slogan T-shirts and prints made by 14 of the emerging artists he collects and promotes. Posted underneath the film came three lines captioning the collection’s title: Cosmic Cruiser / Riding a new age / Restless dreams of a cosmic team.Since the pandemic hit, Slimane has shifted his Celine productions into the open air and into spectacular French locations. Wherever he lands, though, be it a Formula One racetrack, a chateau in the Loire valley, or this time, on a rocky Med coastline, there’s always the same, recognizable atmosphere, the romantic-erotic stamp Slimane puts on a world inhabited by young men, always spiked with his laser-eyed channeling of a relevant moment picked up from youth culture. His meeting of motocross daredevilry and neo-rave frippery nailed the current summer of ’21 teen spirit—a full-ranging breakdown of XXXL elephant jeans, mirrored bug sunglasses, scaled-up bombers, tour jackets, and draped tuxes. Black capes flew over sexy black leathers; sequins, crystals, and silver western boots glinted.A boy lost on his own Cosmic Cruiser trip officiated as the sun went down in a sunset-embroidered poncho: a hedonistic, freedom-celebrating finale for a back-to-clubs, back-to-raving Gen Z audience that’s at long, long last out on the loose.
27 July 2021
Hedi Slimane’s Celine video for fall feels so like taking an immersive course in the offhand art of French dressing that it makes you want to hit replay again and again. Every item of the Parisian wardrobe is paced out and remixed in that on-point manner that has made French girl-style the envy of the world. Never overdone, but perfectly self-aware, with that good-bad hair that looks as if it might have been washed a couple of days ago.It’s that knack of pairing something posh that might have belonged to your mom or dad—a Chanel-ish jacket, an oversize herringbone coat—with something casual. Of throwing on a tweed hacking jacket or trench coat with exactly the right cut of bashed-up old jeans. Of knowing that a naval jacket and a black tuxedo are always cool. All this has been passed down through French generations since at least Jane Birkin’s heyday; what makes the difference is Slimane’s exacting eye for timely proportions. The way he’ll toss in Gen Z relevance by inserting asymmetric crop tops here and there into looks that actually women of any generation could easily wear.The fact that the show was set amongst the breathtaking gardens of the Château Vaux-le-Vicomte, some 55 kilometers outside Paris, only adds to Slimane’s conjuring of haute French identity—Celine’s modern girls walking casually past the exquisite formal fountains and pools landscaped centuries ago by André Le Nôtre. It’s landed as a sequel to the last Celine menswear show, in which Slimane’s young chevaliers roamed the battlements of the Château Chambord in the Loire valley. Having the keys to the castles of France is surely a brand power play, but here’s a thought: Has Hedi Slimane turned unexpectedly romantic, wistful even, during the pandemic?There was a line in his show notes, typographically smooshed together, which alluded to a “utopian parade and melancholic daydream of youth interrupted.” It ran after quotes from Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud—France’s decadent, libertine poets eternally famed for exalting the excess and pain of misspent youth. In a time when parties, clubs, festivals, and events have been banned for so long, the show ended with a shift to a fairy-tale scenario. A girl in a glittering, hand-beaded crinoline stood looking toward the chateau with fireworks exploding in the sky. There was a deer by her side, a tear on her cheek. There’ll be nowhere for the princess to wear that crinoline yet—definitely not in locked-down France right now.
But Slimane and Celine are clearly dreaming of that day.
14 April 2021
Flying the flag of Celine Homme, a young chevalier gallops on his black stallion toward the Château de Chambord, followed by a posse of fellow knights on white chargers. On the fantastical turreted rooftops stands a lone blond princeling, wrapped melancholically in a black cloak and a high-necked white frilled-neck Renaissance blouse. And so begins the dramatic unfolding of Hedi Slimane’s “Teen Knight Poem,” his “Nouveau Romantique” rallying call to the teen spirit of 2021.Youth might leap to the conclusion that the scenery is some kind of CGI-created dream castle—but not at all. The Château de Chambord is a hunting lodge in the Loire valley built by the “Chevalier King” Francois I in the 16th century, a monument wreathed in French Renaissance history, chosen as a narrative background for a collection balanced between a flight of medievalist escapism and Slimane’s laser-keen contemporary focus on products to get contemporary guys buying.Slimane “fell in love with” the Château de Chambord because of its spectacular black-and-white architecture. We know about the authentically real, extravagantly haute setting because of the unusually explanatory press notes he sent out this season. There’s even a credit for the horse Goya, the “17-year-old Black Andalou stallion,” ridden by “Raoul, son and nephew of friends of Hedi.” And a footnote detailing how Slimane sent the sound of a “French military drum march” as a keynote to The Loom, his British musician friends Jack and George Barnett, to inset as the beat of this season’s house-style mesmerically looping Celine soundtrack.The trope—young boys bravely clad in various references to armor—had an elation about it. A conscious elevation of intent too. Whereas last season, Slimane had gone down to e-boy teen-bedroom level, now he was up to high culture—inspired by portraits of the court of Francois I and placing an explicit emphasis on extreme French luxury. Broad-shouldered leather gilets and oversized knits sounded a kind of simultaneous clarion call to ’80s pop culture and medieval battle gear and tabard-like silhouettes, also a neat way of circling back to Slimane-invented skinny-legged territory. Nouveau romantic dangly earrings, studded knit helmet-beanies, and metal-tipped Chelsea boots piled on the accessory inventory—some random yeti ski boots too.
Luxury, though: When all’s said and done, Celine is a luxury French house, and—never mind the spinning out of accessible hoodies and unmissable logos (which there were also aplenty)—that reputation has to be upheld too. Slimane’s notes held his answer to that. The embellishments in stones, crystal, and chain mail glinting among this collection were “realized in Parisian couture and embroidery ateliers”; the final look took 23 embroiderers more than 1,300 hours of work. Not much difference there from the labor lavished on the ceremonial garb in the 16th century, when you think about it. Are there neo-princes out there in the world today who will go for that? Probably.
8 February 2021
Celine has released its Summer Part 1 Collection for women to buy now on its website (it’s not taking part in Black Friday sales). It’s a small drop of house of Celine classics timed for when certain girls will be writing up their holiday wish-lists. Parents, even grandparents might understand the appeal of a Celine horse-and-trap Sulky logo t-shirt as something to send, if they’re feeling indulgent. A pair of mini-horsebit gold brass earrings, or an anchor bracelet, maybe. It’s all in a can’t-go-wrong style they’d have worn themselves in the ’70s, after all—wearable, evergreen nostalgia, as is everything in this segment of the Celine wardrobe.Hedi Slimane photographed the clothes in St. Tropez on Rianne Von Rompaey in June, which seems to date its provenance to before he filmed both his Celine’s men’s collection and the recently-seen women’s summer collection. Presumably, that was when the first lockdown was focusing production on realistic, reliable pieces: jeans, French-girl safari jackets, cozy sweaters, peasant dresses, rather than party-going fantasy wear. Well, true enough.There’s little point in dressing up with nowhere to go at the moment.It’s been delivered without any of the fanfare or multi-channeled activity which has been surrounding other brands’ launches these past few weeks. In the wardrobe Slimane has built, one collection blends into another and clothes are meant to stay relevant, whatever the season—that’s self-evident.
28 November 2020
Since the summer of 2020, when he showed his Dancing Boy men’s collection—an ode to e-boys—on a Formula One track in the South of France, Hedi Slimane has switched his approach to documentary mode. The second half of what he called (in an email) a “portrait of a generation”—this one for girls—was also filmed in a sports venue, the Stade Louis II in Monaco. “With this collection Hedi wants to show, through the youth [and] optimism, the hope [in] this uncertain time.”Styling and restyling the bourgeois codes of what Celine used to stand for is how he started at this house. Now, interrupting them with how they might be rehandled by French Gen Z on the street—or at home—is the name of his game.She’s “always the Parisian but with a new energy—she listens to rap/hip-hop music”—like the track by Princess Nokia, which looped hypnotically as the models strode the circuit, their Celine-logo baseball caps and bucket hats pulled down, hands thrust in the pockets of their jeans, shorts, and ’80s style blousons.The timeless bits of luxury fashion—like the tailored blazer, the glamorous sequined dress, and the ladylike Sulky bag—are still centrally represented: Slimane isn’t about to give up on plying that wardrobe. The difference is his sharp-eyed assessment of the way that the granddaughters of Celine’s earlier customers will likely give the posh stuff a complete dressing down. Gone are the old tropes of proper, high-heel polish. This generation will only wear flats—anything from sneakers to fluffy bedroom slides to hiking boots and Wellington boots—put crop tops under blazers, throw on nylon jackets over loose-fitting sparkly dresses and track pants under jackets.It’s a rewritten language of style that Slimane aims to be read by youth globally. The parting shot of the film soared up through the roof of the Monegasque stadium, switched to a darkened sky, and culminated with a view of the earth seen from space. What did it signify? That our planet is beautiful and we’re still lucky to be alive on it—maybe something like that. For the anxious times that all kids are living through, that seemed to be Slimane’s small gesture of hope.
26 October 2020
Hedi Slimane’s long-teased collection “The Dancing Boy” crossed the starting line for viewers onceline.com, Instagram, and YouTube today with a long drone shot hovering over the deserted Circuit Paul Ricard motor racing track in the South of France. Cameras then zoomed in to track solitary boys walking the Formula One lanes—the opener to a film made by Slimane as his salute to how teens in bedrooms all over the world have been posting solitary TikTok performances during the pandemic.Both clothes and atmosphere read as consolation for all the festivals that didn’t happen in 2020—and a celebration of an unputdownable generation that has forged its own mass youth movement and overnight stars through the new medium that Donald Trump hates most. Subtitled “A teen romance,” Slimane described the show (which was filmed on July 19) in a follow-up email as “a ‘documentary’ collection spanning E boys and current skate culture” and “a candid portrait of a generation that took advantage of the confinement to assert itself and emancipate itself creatively.” It was their music too—a Celine-commissioned 15-minute edit of 22-year-old Canadian rapper Tiagz’s TikTok-famed “They Call Me Tiago (Her Name Was Margo).”As a designer with a lifelong obsession with layering youth references of the past into his work, Slimane was in his element, finally being able to riff off the energy—and the wardrobes—of a live subculture. The whole thing had been designed in St. Tropez “well before March,” the concept triggered by Slimane’s signing of TikTok teen idol Noen Eubanks as a face of the Celine campaign last year. An air of deliberately unaffected, grungy, thrown-together casualness—“the new adolescent codes” as Slimane put it—was forensically observed and replicated: oversized cardigans, printed jersey skater shorts, beanies, tiger-print sequined trackies, varsity jackets, sleazy ’80s patchwork blousons, giant knitted ponchos—and was that a pair of polka-dot pajama bottoms in there?Hearing that this pileup of pieces that might’ve been found on a kid’s bedroom floor is not exactly what grown-ups perceive as the output of a luxury goods house would be music to Slimane’s ears. Annoying the elders is his delight. Yet he’s a designer who cannily has it both ways.
While there’s so much that’s accessible in the way of accessories—and bold Celine logos on bags make a direct pitch to the money-spinning hypebeast market—Slimane’s signature tailoring was slipped in there too: a suit with pleated high-waist trousers, a gold tiger-patterned sequined rock star jacket. Anyone looking for signs of elevated Parisian handcraft might detect it in the neon glow-in-the-dark palm trees embroidered on the backs of a couple of jackets: “A nod to the LED lights that invariably decorate the bedrooms of teenagers the world over,” said Slimane.Largely, though, it was a show set to appeal to a different (gigantic) audience in what now feels like a very different era from the one in which Celine showed its last physical fashion show to that traditionally packed tent of industry insiders in March. Yet it was also interlaced with hope and energy: Maybe one day next summer all those boys will be out dancing together again at raves and festivals, looking just like this.
29 July 2020
Part of Hedi Slimane’s power as an artistic director is his concision: the ability with a mere few pieces to overhaul not just a brand, but also large swaths of fashion. Presented in Paris in July amidst the haute couture shows, this pre-collection was as succinct as the showroom in which it was housed was vast. The Celine look is a boyishly cut blazer, a ruffle-neck button-down, a pair of high-waisted flared jeans, and deceptively humble white trainers, as efficient—and sophisticated—as a code. Labels up and down the market will try to crack it.That said, Slimane is also a completist, and no detail is too small to merit his attention, as the exacting decor of the house’s first-ever parfumerie, recently unveiled on Paris’s Rue Saint-Honoré, suggests. Here, he turned his eye to delicate ID bracelets and even daintier chain necklaces and stud earrings. Note the gold frames on the aviator shades the models wear in more than half of the pictures, a millimeter or two thicker than the other guys’ sunglasses. Do your favorite jeans suddenly feel incomplete without a gold link and leather belt? Slimane and his Celine redo are the reasons why.
8 November 2019
“I have nostalgia for things I have probably never known….There is no irony here.” Okay. Hedi Slimane didn’t speak these words—direct quoting not being his style—but he let the artist David Kramer say them for him in a book of posters given out at the show. Slimane (born 1968) and Kramer (born 1963) are soul mates, doomed to be eternally pissed that they were born fractionally too late to experience the rock-and-roll hedonism of the early ’70s. They didn’t get to swagger high-waist flares and dandified Savile Row tailored suits; to go backstage around the Stones when they were heading hippie in ’67; to seriously don panamas and grow their hair long—when all that was damned new and cool.The return to boyhood dreams has been a recurring theme in the menswear collections this season. The connection Slimane made with Kramer’s work revealingly tied it all back into that same thing. He laid it all out for a new generation in the repertoire of high-hoicked, butt-clinching boot-cut pants and jeans, tiny bomber jackets, and all the minutely observed retailored throwbacks to rock-aristocracy style he marched out on the Celine runway.Slimane made no concessions in the way he showed it. There was no variance on his long-established method of plunging his audience into darkness, the grand installation at the beginning—in this case, a boy in a silver glitter three-piece suit, transported on a rolling throne of a thing, surmounted by disco lights.Fashion theme, rinsed and systematized as accessible product—in this case, aviators, pointy woven-leather Chelsea boots, and skinny ties—is Slimane’s claim on commercial dominance. It can seem emotionless, this method—his way or the highway. It will also inevitably catch criticism for his casting—there were only three black models on what appeared to be an otherwise all-Caucasian runway. The music scene never looked like that in the ’70s, and it certainly does not today. That lack of diversity might be a preventative to this Celine collection speaking as widely as it could across today’s generation.The collection checked many boxes, registering that proto-hippy moment when white kids began to travel, picking up peasant baskets and hanging out in North Africa—the splendid gold-embroidered burnoose cape at the finale chimed in with a lot of other collections this season. Bringing up this era undoubtedly has resonance for a young generation who’s definitely not been born into fun times; Slimane’s right about that.
But somehow the habitual narrowness of his focus missed the inclusive way that kids see the world today.
24 June 2019
Something happened at the beginning of the Celine show that was instantly all over the Internet, but which these runway photos don’t capture. There was a girl, standing in a mirrored box that was hoisted high above the end of the runway and then slowly lowered. In the darkened space, you could guess at what it was—a throwback boutique dressing room from some nonspecific time in the ’70s or ’80s, perhaps? The clothes fit, for sure. As she stepped out at ground level, this girl was wearing precisely what the original Celine was and had meant to every French bourgeois woman—before fashion ever got its hands on it. A pleated, knee-length, divided country-checked skirt with a horse-bit belt. A white silk blouse, a printed logo scarf. A black blazer, glossy knee-length high-heeled boots. A ladylike shoulder bag on a chain. Aviator sunglasses.There have been all sorts of jokes about “old Celine” since Hedi Slimane took over. But in his third showing for the house, this—and everything that followed—was his turning of the tables. This was old,oldCeline—exactly the kind of politely classy merchandise originally sold under the label before LVMH acquired it, long before even Phoebe Philo’s predecessor, Michael Kors, was drafted to make runway shows out of it.In our time of so much fashion, this was Slimane’s moment to iterate, and reiterate, his version of French fashion from a time of nonfashion—a niche of Parisian upper- and middle-class style that he must have understood from being a boy growing up in France. In a way it was exactly what Slimane has always done—taking the subject of a seam of preexisting street style and drilling into it for all it’s worth.If that came as a surprise—this counter-counterculture turn from a designer known for his deep obsession with youth style tribes—it was worked through with all the singular focus and conviction that is Slimane’s known methodology. From beginning to end, it was an exercise in imprinting essentially two looks on the consciousness of his audience in the black box tent—and on the world beyond. There were culottes and variations on silk ladylike dresses, or the skinny jeans, high boots, and jacket combo that simultaneously made up the other side of the bourgeois French girl’s wardrobe throughout the ’70s and ’80s.
1 March 2019
The received wisdom in menswear always used to be that changes in style were only accepted in minute increments, over decades: a nipped-flare suit in the ’70s (Yves Saint Laurent); a broad shoulder in the ’80s (Armani); a dropped waist in the ’90s (Alexander McQueen); a super-skinny suit in the 2000s (Hedi Slimane). But on the cusp of the 2020s, an entire new culture of clothes for men has exploded as a diverse and very young generation across the globe has become unprecedentedly engaged in expanding the possibilities of their identities through fashion. As Hedi Slimane made his comeback in his first stand-alone menswear show for Celine tonight, it was as if he joined a choir of voices which are competing for new-boy attention. The LVMH menswear shows this week attest to that: Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton, Kim Jones at Dior, Jonathan Anderson at Loewe, Kris Van Assche at Berluti (as well as the rest of the vast spectrum of shows we’ve accounted for in Paris and London).As a rock star of menswear—who made a second mass impact by triggering young men and women to buy during his reinvention of Saint Laurent between 2012 and 2016—Hedi Slimane reentered the boy-specific arena with all the conviction of the awesome marketeer of music-cult heritage styles the industry recognizes him to be. Hedi is Hedi, whatever the name of the brand he’s playing for: He’s trained his audience to expect nothing less.The question of how he’d shift the needle again began with his opening statement: a black double-breasted suit, white shirt, black skinny tie, and mean New Wave shades. This is a moment when formal tailoring is in play again for the first time in a generation—and those incremental changes of detail still count. Slimane’s bid—by repetition—was to train the eye on specifics. High-waist pleats, cropped-leg length, laced-up flat boots, or the more familiar super-skinny leather/jean thing he’s always done. Then, a vast smorgasbord of layered jackets and coats, iterating a range of ’80s vibes: hints of a boy’s view of dad’s Armani-gray officewear, granddad’s country tweeds, and classic throwback rock-idol leather jackets and leopard-spot drape coats. Slimane can dazzle, no doubt about it. In the glamour stakes on red carpets, the sequined coats and jackets will threaten to outshine any competition.
But as for the real boys—the populist knack that Slimane has that will likely set off an avalanche of copies? The real thing this Celine debut spotlit was the accessories: the sunglasses, the ranges of black leather shoes (hello! No trainers here). And last but not least: the comeback of skinny ties. No Gen Zer has ever worn one of those. It just might prove to be the one affordable item to lasso kids into Celine stores for a look around, ahead of all the others.
20 January 2019
It was telling that Hedi Slimane’s first press release for his Celine takeover emphasized this fact: “The entire wardrobe worn by the male models is unisex, and therefore will also be available for women.” On a night which was fraught with the separation anxiety suffered by the clan of professional women who have relied on Phoebe Philo’s instincts for Celine, that postshow information was pause for thought. Disruption as a result of the regime change was fully expected. But to take a proper look at Slimane’s design history is to recall that he was the one who reconfigured menswear tailoring—skinny and cool—at Dior Homme in a way that had also had women knocking at the door to order.That seismic Slimane-led fashion-quake was just after the millennium; about the same time that some of the army of new models he cast for his Celine debut were—by appearances—babies. A different generation has been growing up—Gen Z, which is even more accepting of shopping across gendered lines than some of Slimane’s first customers. The show he put on tonight was decisively pitched at them, in line with the much more famous commercial mark he made during his second coming when he rebooted Saint Laurent as a massively influential brand between 2012 and 2016.In this much-anticipated third coming at Celine, Slimane proved in 96 looks that his laser focus on his music-club vision of youth has not wavered. Titled Paris La Nuit, it dealt out super-short glam dresses for girls: sparkly, pouffed, big-shouldered ’80s silhouettes of the sort Slimane showed in his exit homage to Yves Saint Laurent. Anyone of a mind to argue with the extreme length should take a look at schoolgirls in London—thigh-high skirts amongst teens are the uncontroversial norm. That proposition will surely carry internationally, across young Hollywood and Asia, an appeal deliberately designed to speak to teens over the heads of elders.But perhaps those girls will be just as keen to share the wardrobe the boys were walking. This was the introduction of menswear at Celine. It’s timely. The biggest boom in fashion spending in the last few years has been in the explosive growth of a new, brand-obsessed male teen market. So far, its focus has been on sneakers and streetwear, but with Kim Jones at Dior Homme and Virgil Abloh driving Louis Vuitton menswear, a new front is being opened in tailoring. In this new venture, that might be where Slimane’s skinny-suited, narrow-tied tailoring could score big.
There was not a sneaker in sight. If there really is a swing away from hoodies and track pants in progress, Slimane’s proposition—classic New Wave tailoring—could be where kids go next.
28 September 2018
It was telling that Hedi Slimane’s first press release for his Celine takeover emphasized this fact: “The entire wardrobe worn by the male models is unisex, and therefore will also be available for women.” On a night which was fraught with the separation anxiety suffered by the clan of professional women who have relied on Phoebe Philo’s instincts for Celine, that postshow information was pause for thought. Disruption as a result of the regime change was fully expected. But to take a proper look at Slimane’s design history is to recall that he was the one who reconfigured menswear tailoring—skinny and cool—at Dior Homme in a way that had also had women knocking at the door to order.That seismic Slimane-led fashion-quake was just after the millennium; about the same time that some of the army of new models he cast for his Celine debut were—by appearances—babies. A different generation has been growing up—Gen Z, which is even more accepting of shopping across gendered lines than some of Slimane’s first customers. The show he put on tonight was decisively pitched at them, in line with the much more famous commercial mark he made during his second coming when he rebooted Saint Laurent as a massively influential brand between 2012 and 2016.In this much-anticipated third coming at Celine, Slimane proved in 96 looks that his laser focus on his music-club vision of youth has not wavered. Titled Paris La Nuit, it dealt out super-short glam dresses for girls: sparkly, pouffed, big-shouldered ’80s silhouettes of the sort Slimane showed in his exit homage to Yves Saint Laurent. Anyone of a mind to argue with the extreme length should take a look at schoolgirls in London—thigh-high skirts amongst teens are the uncontroversial norm. That proposition will surely carry internationally, across young Hollywood and Asia, an appeal deliberately designed to speak to teens over the heads of elders.But perhaps those girls will be just as keen to share the wardrobe the boys were walking. This was the introduction of menswear at Celine. It’s timely. The biggest boom in fashion spending in the last few years has been in the explosive growth of a new, brand-obsessed male teen market. So far, its focus has been on sneakers and streetwear, but with Kim Jones at Dior Homme and Virgil Abloh driving Louis Vuitton menswear, a new front is being opened in tailoring. In this new venture, that might be where Slimane’s skinny-suited, narrow-tied tailoring could score big.
There was not a sneaker in sight. If there really is a swing away from hoodies and track pants in progress, Slimane’s proposition—classic New Wave tailoring—could be where kids go next.
28 September 2018
Was there any designer who powered female confidence more than Phoebe Philo did while she was at Céline? Looking back to her first runway season with this house, Spring 2010, I wrote that she designs “fashion as it’s really lived.” I stand by that. Always just an edge ahead—say, by a white pointed shoe (first seen, Fall 2012)—of what we thought we’d never, ever wear, and are nowtotallyinto, Philo widened the parameters of that which is silently, joyfully accepted by women. It turned into that rare thing: the consensus-dressing of a generation. The extent of the copying of Philo’s Céline in contemporary fashion made her style seem, like the weather, so normal, so taken for granted as to be almost invisible.Sisters should know that the clothes and accessories in this Pre-Fall lookbook, shot by Philo’s friend Juergen Teller, are definitively her last work of this era. The weirdness in the fashion system being what it is, the collection will be delivered now-ish, through June, while the previously reviewed Fall collection, by a team, will follow, before Hedi Slimane’s Céline debut is shown in October.As her exit statement, it’s worth pausing a bit over the imagery. In the absence of her wanting to say very much, people always read signs of Philo’s emotional states and feminism into her clothes. Well, what’s here? The bold stares of the women into Teller’s lens read as an ultimate statement of how far the projection of self-worth has come today—an autonomous, makeup-free, totally don’t-care-who’s-judging-me attitude. Rude women. It’s a powerful, courageous aspiration for the female condition as we go about our lives in the era of Time’s Up, you might contend. (And as a footnote: Karolin Wolter, the model with the blonde pixie cut, has exactly the same hairstyle that Philo has been wearing lately. It might be going too far to see her as a self-portrait. But . . . )Clothes-wise, on these defiant females, you see all the extravagant chicness and the humor, the wearability and the downright ugly weirdness that have given Céline addicts their fixes all these years. There’s an emphasis on super-deluxe leather, patchworked into graphic stripes and diagonals, or kinkily, and very Frenchly, cut in black. But what are those hefty black safety boots that look as if they could wade in the mud of a construction site? Hilarious! (Still, so many Céline clients are successful architects.)Calmingly, there are the trouser suits that have anchored it all along.
There are three slim, bootleg-y versions—stone, burgundy, a black tuxedo—for all those people who will want to stockpile (while noting how a color-matched hoodie worn under a tailored jacket makes a new three-piece suit, thank you very much). Challengingly, there are those super-extra pleated pants too. Not something you might want to jump into straightaway, perhaps. But assuredly, some will, and with Philo’s track record of setting an extreme that becomes normal through copying in a few seasons flat? You might as well buy and lay them down like a fine wine, until the moment they mature. (From experience, you know this makes sense.)There will be much of this sort to plunder for future-wearing. As she left, Philo made a vintage collection of trophies and souvenirs. It puts the seal on her reputation as the woman who oriented other grown-up women through the best part of the last decade. Let the shopping frenzy begin.
2 May 2018
The showroom setup for the interim Céline collection between the departure of Phoebe Philo and the arrival of Hedi Slimane felt, by necessity, like a mournful pause. The season known as Fall 2018 was displayed in the showrooms at Céline headquarters on the Rue Vivienne, the “work of Phoebe’s studio,” as we’re told. The last collection fully overseen by her will enter stores on June 4. Hedi Slimane is, meanwhile, working to set up his Los Angeles–Paris studio system for his reboot of the brand, to be revealed in September.The fill-in season continues in the Philo spirit: the oversize coats; flared, slouchy-proportioned pantsuits; a knife-pleated, A-line dress with a drawstring neckline. The design team and developers she brought together shouldn’t be underestimated—after all, Philo was able to hire the most skilled of technicians and the brightest of graduate talents to work with her. As the remaining collective who backed up her extraordinary tenure, they projected forward enough to mesh in with at least two relevant trends of this season. One was an abstracted Little Red Riding Hood coat made from luxurious burgundy nappa leather; the other, a patchwork of silk headscarves. It was made into a dress, quirkily decorated with jeweled toggles. They were interesting. But the rest is history.
6 March 2018
Moments after the models took their finale lap at the Spring ’18 Céline show, Instagram was blanketed with shout-outs to Phoebe Philo. It seemed like every woman in fashion had something positive to say about the collection. One friend called it “phenomenal,” another declared she wanted “everything.” Few designers inspire such conspicuous devotion, and the ones that do tend to be the fabulists like John Galliano and Rei Kawakubo, talents who create fantastical garments as opposed to the more practically minded yet chic clothes Philo makes—you can’t call a double-layer, looped-up trench “workaday.” Amidst persistent rumors that she’s exiting the label she joined eight years ago, Philo is designing clothes and accessories that absolutely define the look of this time: intelligent, artful, idiosyncratic.Philo isn’t just influential on the runway—copies of her designs have inspired a clever Instagram hashtag, #TributeBrand—but in her manner of doing business as well. When she opted to withhold her pre-collection photos until the pieces had begun arriving in stores four years ago, a dozen top fashion labels quickly followed suit, while others have since decided to combine their pre-season and main season collections into a single show. Philo presented her 2018 pre-Spring collection last July when editors were in Paris for the couture shows. Thematically, it’s of a piece with the Céline runway show that followed in early October in its emphasis on strong, somewhat oversize tailoring, its touches of delicate lingerie lace, and its embrace of the eccentric hero piece (in both cases, printed, almost sheer turtlenecks).Reviewing the pictures now, it looks like Philo and her team were workshopping ideas here that morphed somewhere between July and October. Are the large square scarves that drape unexpectedly across the shoulders of V-neck sweaters the progenitors of the large leather scarf bags that appeared on her recent runway? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, they’re distinctive. More Céline trophies in the making.
31 October 2017
“You’re all I need to get by.” Method Man featuring Mary J. Blige’s lyrics were threaded through the soundtrack at the Céline show. Sounds cheesy, but there’s a truth there. The wardrobe Phoebe Philo builds on, season after season, is what so many members of the professional class of women who attend Céline shows—and thousands beyond—actuallydorely on to get by in daily life. Philo’s trouser coats, shirts, shoes—they fit the person and the psychic identity. “It’s personal,” says the designer. She intuitively channels feelings into product. And this season, this is what she feels: “I wanted to be optimistic. It was just this sense of joy and life force. It felt like a celebration. I thought, If there’s anything to say at the moment, let it be with love and let it be joyful.”Philo gathered her audience close in and placed sleeping bags on benches to “give people comfort.” She said her research had reeled her back to the reason she’d been interested in joining Céline in the first place: the time before it had been “fashion” as we know it. “The advertisements of the late ’70s and early ’80s—this woman on the Avenue Foch in Paris. They had pleated skirts and big hairdos,” said Philo. “And the other thing was that they were quite a lot older and proud in their feeling about clothes.” She paused. “So I started looking at the designers of the early ’80s, pre-AIDS. I can almost not imagine what it felt like, to have that joyousness and freedom.”It was far from a historical theme, but that backdrop—looking at the proportions of big-shoulder suits by Claude Montana, experimenting with trenchcoats and working into tailoring—led Philo into a collection she clearly enjoyed developing, with all the sui generis, innovative quirks that keep her audience hooked.Greige-khaki suits with big shoulders and side-pleated skirts or trousers came with double-layered, looped-up trenchcoats. That evolved, through an array of belted coats, into long fringes of suede flying from dresses beneath, pliable giant envelope leather totes, and softly padded clutches. A huge range of footwear walked on: neat ’90s-styled booties with squared-off toes, ’80s-style kitten heels, a pair of black block-heeled ankle boots with a different piece of brooch-like jewelry on either toe.Audience members were counting off intended purchases with every look. It’s the quality and the craftsmanship that make Céline so incredible.
It’s fashion that squares the circle by being non-disposable—of the moment yet timeless. Bravo.
1 October 2017
In the cacophony of shows that are competing for attention this month, there’s one major designer—a heroine to many women—who has deliberately fallen silent. Phoebe Philo’s complete withdrawal from speaking about her work at Céline is one of those things that’s capable of cleaving a critic’s brain in two.On the one hand, it’s frustrating. She can’t be grilled on her inspirations. Nobody can ask her why she liked this color or that, what she thinks about politics and the state of the world vis-à-vis feminism—all the questions a designer is routinely bombarded with backstage. Ms. Philo has absolutely no comment on why she felt she liked floor-length kilts—there are six in the Pre-Fall collection that’s being delivered to stores now. We don’t know how she came up with the idea of putting fluted, high-waisted dresses over flared trousers, or fluid midis over narrow pants. Why the chevron patterns? No clue.And on the other? There’s simultaneous admiration for a designer who resists being interpreted for anything other than her clothes and accessories. It’s brave and risky to go naked into the retail fray without the gloss of a single quote, profile, social media campaign, or the provision of a single insta-opportunity—in radical contrast to the communications infrastructures that exist to pump out publicity at equivalent houses. These clothes were viewed earlier in the year on racks at Céline’s headquarters at the Rue Vivienne in Paris. The designer wasn’t present. The only conclusion to draw is that she would rather put her work in front of customers to critique in changing rooms and at checkout counters. Over to you, then. They’re out there now.
30 May 2017
As to why the Céline audience was seated on revolving turntables, we were left to guess. Phoebe Philo, as her press people had cautioned, wasn’t to be asked any questions backstage. This is a new trend. “Experiential” sets—the atmosphere, the no-expense spared installations—are now à la mode. People who make luxury clothes want to communicate more about themselves and the world, for goodness sake, than the cut, the color, and the fabric! On the other hand, Philo, loath to articulate her work in words since she was a student, was the first person to say: Clothes are clothes, deal with what you see.The set was no jolly fairground carousel. From the beginning, the sensory experience exerted physical stress. For half an hour before the show, the air was filled with dissonant noise, like that of a church organ stuck on one near-intolerable note. Eventually, the turntables started revolving, and the models came out, in streams, a choreography calculated to create confusion.Was it an artistic enactment of the acute background awfulness women must try to rise above every day? Or a metaphor for what it’s like to be involved in the relentless, repetitive cycle of the fashion industry? In some ways, as the models paths crisscrossed the set, the impression was that of a busy street. At some points, a screen could be glimpsed at the end of the runway, through which the shadows of the Céline team could be seen frantically putting on the show.In the ambient chaos, there were, of course, plenty of the clothes the Céline woman has come to rely on to keep her act together in an increasingly difficult corporate world. There were no-nonsense black pantsuits with boxy jackets, buttoned-up collars and stirrup pants, worn with solid Western boots; longer, more waisted versions of the favorite Céline tuxedo coat; striped shirts; and many variations on raincoats. Gone were the neat lady-bags of last season; in their place, capacious black nylon totes, slung on shoulders.It had a pragmatic air. There were dresses, for sure—slightly experimental bubble dresses; slim long shapes with fringing on integral scarves or on hems. But all in all? The collection had the air of a go-to-work uniform; a wardrobe in which to be prepared to tough out the situation. The alleviating quirk of the season were the giant, fuzzy stoles slung over some of the models’s arms: comfort blankets for the corporate army of Céline women on the long, hard road that may lie ahead?
5 March 2017
Oh, it’sCéline!Phoebe Philo’s methods of slinking in under the publicity radar are becoming yet more exquisitely practiced with every season. Put it this way: If closing off backstage interviews after her Spring show (the latest) was one blow to quote-seeking news-gatherers, then choosing to release Céline Resort pictures on the day of the U.S. presidential election takes evasion to another level. It begs a question: How much does Phoebe Philo want these pictures seen? Or more to the point, is she silently maneuvering against her clothes being over-seen and over-shared before her customers have a chance to stumble upon them in a Céline store for themselves?That’s a really interesting, moot point. At an intellectual, luxury level such as Céline’s, the mystique of the personal choice, the individual discovery, is the pleasure. A self-determining Céline customer wouldn’t need the pre-endorsement of anyone else before she’d wade into trying on a pair of pleat-fronted, narrow-ankled pants or jackets with vast shoulders tapering into super-nipped waists. Nor does she need anything other than the evidence of her own eyes to know that an oversize beige trenchcoat is precisely the right thing to own now.Truth be told, Resort and pre-collections are the places Philo has always secreted away her best—meaning most durably fashion-proof—clothes. This time, there are some quite radical proportions going on.What catches the eye most in the new lineup is Philo’s swaggeringly womanly tailoring, which aligns with what Hillier Bartley, Vetements, and Jacquemus are doing. On a rail—which is how these garments were viewed by the press, back in July—it’s impossible to tell how these proportions settle on a body. That’s a matter between a woman, a changing room, and her own reflection, presumably the only place of judgment Philo counts as real.
8 November 2016
It seemsPhoebe Philohas reached the point where she just wants her clothes to speak for themselves—because she didn’t want to say anything about them before or after her show. To alleviate any suspicion that she might be becoming a recluse, however, the designer was out front, casually milling around, saying hi as her guests took their seats. You cannot blame her for not wanting to take part in the increasingly stressful journalistic scrum, which has developed backstage, as exhausted reporters stick their iPhones in the faces of sleep-deprived designers, a rigmarole no one finds pleasant. Besides, this is no new feeling for Philo. Ever since she was a student at Central Saint Martins, she has always been the girl who stood out from the Conceptuals, and balked at having to give intellectual justifications for her work.As it transpired, today’s setup and the clothes did speak for themselves—and for a relatable point of view on women’s lives. There was the soundtrack, to begin with: the far-off noise of city traffic, and children’s voices—a subliminal aural image of the school drop-off? Then the models started to circulate, individuals in a busy crowd, each calmly and purposefully on her own route. It wasn’t hard to see the message: This was a broad spectrum of clothes designed to make everyday life a little easier and more beautiful for lots of women.Need a trouser suit? Then it will have a boxy tailored jacket or coat, with wide, cropped kick flares. The jacket, Philo suggests, might be worn over a long printed skirt. For a summer day dress, there were long-sleeved midis with full skirts. With them, the perfect bag for women who are embarrassed to carry an It bag—a classy, gimmick-free top-handled frame handbag, which looked as if it might have come from theCélinearchive. So far, sorted out, simple guidelines for lives, which are already burdened with complications.But what also draws women to Céline is Philo’s subtly nonconformist taste level. This time it was her brilliant color sense, which demonstrated that distinction—mint green and magenta combined in a low-waisted cotton shirtdress attached to a flowy skirt, with red boots and a bag, for example; or the offbeat shades of lemon and pink in a couple of draped, caped evening dresses.
All in all, there was a sense that a Céline woman could go anywhere she needs in these clothes—to the school gate in the trainers, to a meeting in the tailoring, to a gallery opening or a cocktail party—without feeling either underdressed or overdone. It was fashion on an intuitive, clever, understanding wavelength. We know it when we see it—no explanation needed.
2 October 2016
Looking at anyCélinecollection is a kind of meditative process, an exercise in trying to tune into the shifts that are flowing throughPhoebe Philo’s sensibilities. Fashion ascribed her that guru-like status a long time ago: We look up to her as one of the leads, the high-up thinkers who can give definitive form to feelings about being ourselves, women in the world.Somehow, it is increasingly about refinement, oddness, and covering up—the total, diametric clothing opposite of the imagery of women in reality-show culture. Perhaps even a kind of intellectual armor of resistance against that world? In that sense, this is a collection that shows the way for nonconformist women to express themselves as grown-ups. It encompasses eccentricity, non-normality, and an invitation to pick out and de-layer the bits and pieces.And there are lots of layers, mainly long, narrow tunics over pants, an earlier iteration of the proposal Philo put out in her last show (Pre-Fall was presented in January). That look, with its potential bulk, isn’t for everyone in literal form—but who takes fashion literally these days? The tunics, obviously, can be dresses, too—the gorgeous suede ones in mauve or loden green being notable as potential wardrobe investments for all time. Most women would take away the pants from under the lovely micro-floral print midi dress, too. Looks cool in the picture, but it’s only styling.Otherwise, there’s the oversizing of outerwear and tailored jackets to consider; the addition of silver pendants of the ’70s art-jewelry genre; “croissant” pouch bags on fine chain handles; baggy, round-toed stack-heeled knee boots; and a palette of creamy-beige, burgundy, cinnamon, absinthe, and loden green.It would be overdoing it to read this interim collection as a statement or to read any profound prescribed meaning into any one thing. The meaning is what the woman herself gives the piece, the context she puts it in, the extent to which it becomes part of her life: That’s Céline-style feminism for you.
10 May 2016
“I came about it through wearing it,” saidPhoebe Philo. “It’s always that.” She was standing backstage going through the ritual—or is it torture?—of answering press questions. She was wearing a black boiled wool midi dress over a pair of white flared trousers. And that was it, really: the essence of the elongated fit and flare silhouette she showed in many variations for Fall.Oddly, it didn’t look like Fall, so much, though. There were walkable, practical leather sandals on bare feet, glimpsed through the slits in the kick-flared pants, plenty of sunshiny lemon yellow and sleeveless dresses, too. But do seasons matter these days? As another designer at the helm of a globally distributed brand remarked recently, “It’s always summer somewhere in the world where we’re selling.”But it seemed as if this collection was looking for what matters in a more fundamental way, too. This was a much more stripped-back, more utilitarian, go-with-the-flowCélinethan we’ve been used to seeing. Though there were conceptual shapes—a big black tweed bubble of a top, which at first appeared to have only one armhole, led into a sequence of long shirts and tunics worn over the same shape of loose, very nice pants, with variations on khaki raincoats interspersed within them. The reiteration made it a more relaxed affair to watch—something to absorb at leisure rather than crane anxiously to keep up with. Quite deliberately so, it seems.“It’s a busy world, and I find I have this idea of stillness with Céline,” Philo said, adding that designing, to her, is “a constant tussle.” Calming down the creative turmoil for a season seemed to give Céline the chance to re-own the template of shirts, well-cut trousers, and smart utility coats which Phoebe Philo established here to such success. Apart from the new bags—and there were many, some with soft, scarf-like knotted straps—it was good enough to allow customers to contemplate the strengths of the house.
6 March 2016
Sit through a month of collections and you see a lot ofPhoebe Philo-isms. It’s no understatement to say that theCélinecreative director is the most referenced designer working in fashion today. There have been other big touchstones in 2015—Martin Margiela, first and foremost—but they aren’t making clothes in real time like Philo is. To click through the photos of her Resort collection, which was shown at Céline headquarters back in July but hasn’t been posted online until now, is to get a picture of what the runways will look like next February and beyond.Resort found Philo revisiting some of the ideas about deconstruction she began exploring in her Fall show and experimenting with bold, new proportions. Bows were the only thing that connected gauntlet sleeves to the shoulders of mismatched tops, and buttonholes lined the waistband, hem, and side seams of slightly padded skirts, like a duvet that had come undone. There was an audacity to those looks that her die-hard followers will find hard to resist. Simpler pieces like a slightly boxy button-down tucked into paper-bag-waist trousers could have more widespread appeal, but Philo was committed to extremes here. Super-wide-leg pants pooled at the ankle, and skirts looked as if they were made from shirts tied nonchalantly from the hips. Another case in point: the collection’s extended, pointy-toed, babouche-style flats. They looked even stranger than Philo’s glove-leather pumps did when they hit the runway a few seasons ago, but we expect these will become “a thing” in much the same way, coveted by her fans and copied by nearly everyone else.
22 October 2015
“It’s about taking her out of urban life and putting her feet on the sand. It’s where I long to be, more and more,” saidPhoebe Philoin her debrief about Céline, as dozens of journalists jostled to shove their iPhones in her face. But the background of Céline—its conceptual tented setting, its variety, the storming briskness of her models—cannot be captured in a convenient old-school sound bite about color, silhouette, and theme. Philo rebuilt Céline by trusting her instincts, and by trusting that other women are tuned into the same wavelength. And now she’s getting more outspoken about it. “I am somebody who is interested in how clothes make us feel,” she said, “and in how we behave in different places. I thought, If you were traveling for a year, what would you need to take with you?”Where were her model-avatars heading? The space, constructed by FOS, a Danish installation artist, suggested something between a festival hangout and an art biennial in a hot locale, but the music was a mechanistic drumming that kept pace with the stream of girls, marching swiftly and with intent, shod in utilitarian ankle boots, or almost-medieval woven-leather pointy flats.If anything has turned a corner at Céline since the last couple of shows, it’s the feeling that an incipient conceptualism and eccentricity has been jettisoned. Instead, this was a grounded collection, a sophisticate’s compendium, giving the definitive word on wearing the ‘90s slip dress in pulled-together grown-up style; on handling the ‘80s tendency with a curvy shoulder line and a Jean Paul Gaultier rib-knit waist; on nodding to the milkmaid neckline with an abstracted trompe l‘oeil corseting; and on pants, pants, pants. What with the English menswear tweedy checked suiting, the wide cropped pair of trousers in extraordinarily high-shine black satin and, then, the olive green army parka and pants that swing out at the end, Philo reminded all and sundry that this is the house that services women with the best cuts available.Yet on the other hand, Céline is also a dress source. And here, there was a full spectrum of those as well, not just plunging lace-edged slips but practical workday survival looks in utititarian linen, and then, for evening or perhaps day-wafting on holiday, long fluid jersey dresses with high-waisted bodices and chaste-medieval scooped necks. A telling reaction to this collection was the instant straw poll going on among guests as they poured out of the show.
Asking each other what they liked best, everyone had a different answer. And that’s the way it is, today: There is, and should be, no one look, but a spectrum of equally valid looks for many of us to feel like ourselves in. Phoebe Philo’s genius is that she holds the mirror up to that emotional reality. Applause.
4 October 2015
Fur pompom scarves. Leather holsters. Duvet coats that peeled away at the shoulders. And don't forget the woven leather huaraches dripping with paste brooches. The irreverence of Phoebe Philo's Fall Céline show was met with enthusiastic surprise, but as these Pre-Fall pictures suggest, Philo has been in a more playful headspace for a while now. Shown by appointment at Céline's new Paris headquarters during the couture shows in January, the collection retained many of Philo's recognizable signatures, from the cropped culotte silhouette that has since been adopted by scores of other labels to the fringing that she began playing with on her Spring '15 runway.The news was in its looseness, both literally (long-sleeve silk blouses were suspended from the most delicate of straps, exposing collarbones and biceps) and figuratively (the outlier of the lineup, a crisp white shirtdress, was embroidered in a naive style with a bright red sun and a pair of birds). Philo did a lot of experimenting here, most of it compelling, but the best look might've been the simplest. It was a white V-neck maxi dress with the slightest bit of ruching down the front, as effortless as a T-shirt but elegant as all get-out.
30 April 2015
There is allegedly no such thing as coincidence, so presumably there's some meaning to the fact that Phoebe Philo was showing her new Céline collection on International Women's Day, even though she conceded that she was very conscious of walking a line between the responsibility that has been bestowed upon her as the Designer Who Knows What Women Want and the borderline irresponsibility of pleasing herself. A challenging balancing act, for sure, except that in addressing her own wants and needs, Philo managed to find a new space for Céline."The best part of this job is finding out more about myself," she said after the show. "It gets deeper and deeper into the roots." And where those roots went deep today was into a new sense of playfulness. Big, fluffy pom-poms? Otters and foxes and deer as literal animal prints? Duvet coats? All that and more showed a new side of Céline. "Dressed-up-ness," Philo called it. "I was never in the headspace to approach it before. I find glamour and sexuality awkward. When do they feel authentic? What's real, what's not?" Big questions. And Philo addressed them with a collection that, by her own admission, was a little Latin American. "The blood is hotter," she said. "The approach is more dramatic."That was certainly helped by Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso crooning ardently on the soundtrack, and a set that had the flavor of a villa in Rio, with wood-grain pillars and terra-cotta tiles. They cracked as the models walked on them. Why was that erotic? And that was before knits that defined the body, and coats that were fervently trimmed in fox, and shoes whose heels were bejeweled, and a surreal Madonna nod with a knit bustier. And holsters! "There was almost too much going on," Philo conceded. "That's why there were other times when it was more gritty, more Northern soul, less passionate."Maybe by "less passionate" she meant plain knit dresses worn with high-tops ("Keeping everyone grounded," she said) but they were a respite in a collection that otherwise shunted boldly into graphic new territory. This wasn't the first collection this season that has exalted the artisanal work of the hand, but here it had a particularly striking naïveté: boiled-wool pieces with embroidery smashed up, broken down, as well as trims of fur and feather. Those animal prints were hand-drawings based on the illustrations in children's books. Then there was the fox fur. "Loaded, vulgar, intense," said Philo.
"I'm trying to propose that we women go for it."How many times has it been said that design is autobiography? This collection was a testament to that truth: a freer Philo, a Philo in search of fun. Yes, the duvet coats spoke of the protection that was an early Céline signature, but here the sleeves buttoned off and some of them were peeled back, suggesting imminent breakout.
8 March 2015
The major takeaways from Phoebe Philo's Spring '15 collection for Céline were serenity, sweetness, and a surprising abundance of flowers. Philo acknowledged that she wanted to move away from the strict, edited look that the label has been known for, but the show wasn't a total about-face. Loosening up has been an ongoing process, as a click-through of the Resort collection—presented without pomp and circumstance back at the beginning of the summer in Paris but released online today as the clothes arrive in stores—proves.Philo's big emphasis here was knits. Densely ribbed and boldly striped tunics topped full skirts that extended below the knee, clingy and cool, especially with the unexpected addition of chandelier rhinestone earrings. Earrings: They just keep getting bigger. Floor-grazing knit dresses in ivory or black were shown sans shoes, to emphasize, perhaps, feelings of unencumbrance and ease. Deep tiers of fringe at the hem of a sleeveless sweater looked like a starter run at the swishy masses of the stuff on some of Spring's key pieces. The tailoring, meanwhile, was as sharp as ever, but Philo made a point of diversifying. Pants were cropped with a kick flare above the ankle or pooled on the ground. For evening, she pitched jumpsuits, bare-armed or long-sleeve. Philo has put her stamp on the all-in-one since the beginning; the news was in the playful—yes, unencumbered—electric red and yellow pumps.
18 November 2014
"This Woman's Work" by Kate Bush opened the Céline show this afternoon. "She's with me today, I hope," said Phoebe Philo, wearing a T-shirt from Bush's recent 22-night session in London. "I was incredibly inspired by that song. I couldn't believe how vulnerable it was. And being vulnerable is an incredibly important part of being creative."Vulnerability for Philo this season meant embracing uncertainty. "In a way, I was open to everything—no preconceived ideas, very little of me saying no." The collection was almost a stream of consciousness, a random portmanteau of moods and emotions from the very first outfit: a utilitarian top paired with a fitted knit skirt, provocatively slit front and back, that dissolved into a mass of fringing. Work and play in one artful package. It set the tone for what followed.It was fascinating to watch the way in which shapes as practical as a coat, a tunic, or a shift were unhinged by lacquered inserts, cutouts, streamers of fabric. The shoes were flat, elasticized, functional. If the topstitching also emphasized utility, the belts of string weighted with a metal something that could be either a padlock or a bell pointed toward mystery. Like the ceramic hand that clutched a throat, or the ceramic pair of lips that dangled in pendant form.The floral prints were new—a bourgeois insertion into Céline's implacable cool. A risk, perhaps. But, as Philo pointed out, edit certainty from the equation and the connection between creativity and risk becomes even more graphic. That connection—raw, dynamic—is the same extraordinary one Philo has made with women all over the world. Whatisa woman's work? "Being a mother, a sister, a friend, a fashion designer," she said. "A huge amount of different things, all of them fulfilling, all of them equally important."
28 September 2014
Only Phoebe Philo could cause an intake of the fashion industry's breath with the way she placed a white button on a black coat. The first looks on Céline's catwalk today featured sleek, thirties-styled tailoring, and double-breasted closings gone surreally askew. The thirties were on Philo's mind when she was first thinking about the collection, especially women like Hannah Höch and Lee Miller, who were pivotal figures in the Dada and surrealist art worlds. In fact, it was a photo of Miller in the bath in Hitler's Munich apartment after the fall of the Nazis—travel-stained boots parked by the tub, fatigues folded on a chair—which was Philo's starting point. "These women were doing things which were quite radical at the time, like wearing men's clothes, but which today seem quite normal," she said. "I very much wanted women in men's clothes, but it was a complex idea so we brought it back to a quite feminine silhouette."Despite the masculine elements in the collection—the oversize, man-styled trousers, for one—Philo's preferred emphasis was thetendernessof the clothes. "I wanted them to feel touched by human hands," she explained. "The way I approached them was very from-the-gut. When I was engaging too much in thought, it felt jarring. When I was in a fitting, I'd just get my hands on the clothes and feel a very instant relationship." That primal-sounding connection translated into pieces that Philo insisted were very much crafted by hand rather than manufactured. They were as sensual as the tweed knits that pooled extravagantly over platform sandals, as textured as the hazy animal prints. Philo underscored the importance of nature with the lush greenery that sprouted along the catwalk. She imagined her woman running through fields, "wild, tender, strong." The clothes themselves often felt bursting with life, with seams feathering and fraying. The earrings, strung together from found objects, offered another clue. "Much of the collection was put together like that," said Philo. "Like a collage."The immediacy, the spontaneity, thesensualityof such an idea certainly connected with the audience today, as it will undoubtedly relate to women when the clothes hit stores come fall. Philo has turned herself into the conduit for a million dreams of self-realization. But there may be something more subliminal, even stronger, powering her vision.
Hannah Höch and Lee Miller worked in the particularly chauvinistic world of art, and their gender was held against them, leading to professional disappointment and personal frustration. The subtle fierceness of the Céline collection today could be read as Philo's response to the environment in whichsheworks, where, as she pointed out, she is still a woman in a world of men.
1 March 2014
Phoebe Philo presented her Céline Resort collection in New York back in June, but has only now released photos of the clothes. At the time, there was speculation that copying was a concern for the house. A drive-by of the fast-fashion chains, where Céline knockoffs are hot commodities, backs up that claim. More than four months after the fact, what was Philo's message?One thing Resort wasn't was an early sampling of the collection she showed in Paris last month. Spring was a bold departure for Céline, not only in terms of color and pattern, both of which were exuberant to the extreme, but also in terms of silhouette. Philo's snug-at-the-hip tanks and tunics and asymmetric-hemmed, pleated accordion skirts will no doubt prove directional, and probably not just on the high street. Compared to the art-infused, somewhat tribal look of the show from which those pieces came, Philo's propositions for Resort felt more familiar, if not necessarily safe. There was the off-kilter suiting her customers have come to know and love, super-luxe furs worn with the unassuming ease of a cardigan (NB: the shower shoes), slightly oversize men's coats, and slouchy pants pooling at the ankles. She had a lot of fun with long belts and D-rings, occasionally cinching more than one around the waist. Pockets, too, turned up in odd places, like below the knees on a pair of cargo pants.Philo didn't rewrite fashion history here, but she did rethink the rules in terms of marketing her brand's imagery and image. That'll be fodder for fashion folk, the same way that her hemlines are.
29 October 2013
Back to the Tennis Club de Paris today to see what Phoebe Philo's Céline woman has been up to. And, according to the mood book on each brightly colored, blocky seat, she has been looking at graffiti—not just any graffiti, but graffiti through the medium of Brassaï's photographs, obviously. In the primal black and white images of street art found in the city of Paris there was a distinct clue to the mood of the collection.As the first vividly hued silhouettes emerged, the models walking at a brisk clip to the underlying beat of George Michael's "Freedom," the feeling was bold, bold as Brassaï, if you will. But this wasn't to be a retread of a famous Versace moment. The overlocking song was that Soul II Soul staple "Back to Life," put through something of the wringer, with all its lazy, hazy connotations of summer in the late eighties. And the collection, too, had the immediacy of that song—and perhaps a bit of a debt to the band's former shop in Camden, where leather Africa pendants were sold in large quantities.The color palette had that late-eighties feel of something primary, urgent, graphic. Giant strokes and squiggles dominated in tailored T-shirt shapes over striped sunray pleats. At first, the Céline woman was like a Tony Viramontes illustration sprung to life. But what gave the clothes a real third dimension was the fabric experimentation; here, woven jacquards and knits dominated over prints and were beautifully done. The Céline woman became more intriguing, though, in her embrace of a certain ragga style in the elongated string vest looks, especially when these were layered with a yellow jumper tied around the waist just so. Then she was out of the dance hall and on. Like we said: brisk clip.Yet, the last eight looks were the best of the collection. They didn't feel as if they were in the sway of any history or reference point. Utilizing the large T-shirt silhouette, with a cutout in an abstract, metal-rimmed shape revealing the contrasting tunics layered underneath, then ending in a burst of cheesecloth skirt, these particular looks were outstanding.Perhaps the undercurrent of sensual perversity of the last two seasons has dissipated from the Céline woman this time. But it seems she will never be that uptight or controlled again; this show was free, easy, and fun.
This mood might be familiar, having already been set in motion by Dior's Couture collection earlier this year (fashion's tribes are clearly in the ascendant this season), but it also felt like a collection sprung from real life, from real experiences with a teenage immediacy. Philo defined it as being about "power to women. It was inspired by lots and lots of feelings. It felt like the right time to move on. I never really analyze; it is just what is there inside." And perhaps that's the real power of the Céline woman now: She comes from the heart, not the head.
28 September 2013
A runway made of chipboard. Fuzzy plinths to sit on. The same texture on the invitation. A trend book awaiting each guest with images of clouds, yarn, and fluff, Flemish painting from the fifteenth century, portraits of women and men, the buttocks of statues, mostly female. These were the clues for Phoebe Philo's latest show. What on Earth has the Céline woman, the character Philo has created for her collections, been up to since last we left her?You can't resist imagining the life of the Céline woman; it is quite an extraordinary one. She has some wardrobe for a start—one so precise she wouldn't sit down in it until last season. Of course, she has issues—who among us doesn't?—and she seemed to be working through many of them for Spring. In so doing she became a far more human creation. Now, having gone through her somewhat louche period, it appears as if the Céline woman may be settling down.For one, she isn't wearing furry slippers anymore. Yet she hasn't entirely abandoned the idea of domesticity and warmth. If anything, Philo has increased the quotient this season in her collection. Yet the designer has also melded a mood of stripped-down, put-together elegance, something of the old Céline woman combined with the new.This was primarily demonstrated in the terrific fabric choices. Tactile, tasteful, and—dare it be said—cozy, they tethered the entire offering. This touchable aspect, the very desirability of wearing and living in such materials, is unsurpassed in Philo's output for Céline. The show began with what looked like a form of bouncy cream bouclé; the designer used it for a skirt that gently flared just below the knee and a simple band of a top. Swaddling the model from torso to shoulders, it had a combination of constriction and comfort, a play of sensual and safe. The exact same look was echoed at the very end in navy blue. On both occasions, a simple bag was clutched. It was reminiscent of a hot water bottle in its cozy cover.There was a notion of the mid-century modern made contemporary in this collection; the soft, rounded shapes, the color palette, the exaggerated silhouettes of the coats all played on this. Yet there was also plenty of room for perversity, as in the second-skin leather boots that seemed as if they might be thigh-skimming under those tunics, as well as the laundry-bag check made large on coats, wrap skirts, and funnel-neck tops.
This is a motif from Helmut Lang, here applied to Philo's domestic theme, a nod and a wink to high fashion and the humdrum in one. As Juergen Teller, the photographer of the Céline campaigns, put it: "Really elegant but weird; almost nerdy but perverse." And he should know.And as Phoebe Philo put it backstage after her show: "It was coming from a place of emotion and intimacy, something instinctive. There was softness and desire, to create something emotionally engaged." Over the years there has been much talk of Philo and her output as being "cool." What she has achieved over her last two seasons at Céline is something far more difficult than cool: That's warmth.
2 March 2013
"Dressing up in a romantic, traditional way," was Phoebe Philo's précis for pre-fall. Romantic, we understand. Traditional? Somewhat less so. Much was made of the way Philo broke free from the codes she'd established at Céline on her Spring runway. The look was loose, louche, even. Here, she continued to push herself, most often in terms of cut and fit. The presentation opened with a few classically tailored pantsuits and coats, given a charming update with large pearl buttons. But just as often, she was supersizing jackets and hacking off the sleeves below the elbow, or cutting seriously droopy pants that pooled above enormous wedges. Brass belt buckles covered a good portion of models' torsos on everything from a leather smock dress to a goat-hair coat, and a teddy-bear jacket on the racks reached monster proportions. These are pieces that will appeal to the most forward-thinking of shoppers.But it wasn't all envelope-pushing. The peplum, which Philo is in large part responsible for popularizing, was reincarnated on a leather top and on a tweed blazer, and there's no better word for her three-quarter-length pleated leather skirts thansweet.Come to think of it, there's tradition to be found, too, in a Fair Isle sweater. Hers comes in a heavy-gauge wool, and it will doubtless inspire a rush of imitations on the runways next month.
6 January 2013
Once, you worried for the Céline woman. She would stand there perfectly put-together—you imagined she never sat, that would be too undisciplined and unruly, and it would ruin the line of her clothes. She was anxious for the world to see how brilliant she was; yes, she knew about Bauhaus, both the movement and the band, in depth—had you not seen the color-blocking on her coat or her perfectly manicured iPod? It seemed she existed in a white box, not in the more rococo confines of Avenue Foch. Unlike Fragonard's lady inThe Swing, she would not be showing her knickers anytime soon.Really, there was nothing to worry about. The Céline woman who emerged at that Avenue Foch venue today was somewhat different: stylish, yet slovenly even, elegant in a dishabille way. Yes, you could imagine her sitting down; in fact, you could imagine her sprawled out on a couch. And the Céline woman was all the better for it.A mood of looseness (in both senses of the term) and ease has been permeating many of the shows this season. And yet how the designer Phoebe Philo handled it was distinctly her own. As much was apparent as the first silhouette emerged, black, slightly oversize, trousers slightly half mast, not too perfect. And then there were the shoes: black fur-lined sandals in a Birkenstock vein, and that fur looked like mink with the models' glossy red toenails nestled in it. Perverse, like Méret Oppenheim's furry teacup. The track to accompany all of this? Depeche Mode's "Useless."The shoes were key to this collection: furry, witty, unhinged. In a mostly black and white offering, they disrupted any notion of sobriety. Predominantly flat—yet with some also rather remarkable fur-covered stilettos—they were fuzzy flashes of color, fun, and oddness.As for the clothes, there was something unfinished in those raw edges, or the backs of tops with excess material, or the unfinished seams; there was also a nod to Belgian deconstruction of the nineties. The slouchy, flat-front trousers with their crotches carelessly low, the trenchcoats slung over short dresses with full furry slippers—there was something of the walk of shame about the lot, as well as the nineties up-all-night attitude, when Helmut Lang clothes would be flashed and trashed in clubs. And yet it all really felt like Céline and Phoebe Philo.
Unlike most, this reviewer never imagined Philo as the Céline woman—well, who really could be? She was just so perfect, and not all authors of novels are their characters in any case. The designer had concocted an extreme and immaculate character for her collections, somebody to aspire to for her audience. Yet today she added a new chapter to her story, and it was one you couldn't help but think had sprung from real life. Philo defined her collection as being about "togetherness, beauty, friendship, and a journey." In this journey the Céline woman was humanized. For this viewer, it was the most compelling Céline collection yet.
29 September 2012
Three years into her run at Celine, Phoebe Philo has been mainstreamed. Her accessories have becomethestatus symbol for the upwardly mobile woman—you can't go a block on the Upper East Side without bumping into a Luggage bag. For Resort, she's introduced two new shapes: the All Soft, a zipless, fold-over tote with a "baby" pouch inside, and the Edge, which as its name implies, has a more structured silhouette.On the clothes front, this season wasn't so much a moment to introduce fresh ideas as it was to reassert house signatures. Leather continues to be of paramount importance. It was cut into variegated stripes for t-shirts and used on coats with horizontal panels that unzipped to create different silhouettes. Python featured too, most extravagantly as the patch pockets on a cashmere sweater. And scarf prints also made a reappearance, most interestingly on a pair of shorts and a shell top that were both veiled in a sheer white material.If there's a piece that the Philo girl will have to have, it's the full, flaring trousers with deep stripes of contrasting color at the hem. The cut is great, for one, and two: Those in-the-know will instantly peg them as Celine. For a fashion insider, that produces the same kind of frisson as carrying a Luggage bag does for that Upper East Sider.
10 June 2012
The beyond-imminent birth of Phoebe Philo's third child influenced her presentation today—no big deal, an intimate delivery for a handful of guests. But it had no influence—so she insisted—on the clothes she showed. "Maybe, if I can't lose the weight, there'll be empire lines next season," Philo said.In the meantime, every seat had her usual grab bag of images, which may—or may not, she claimed—have been lurking in her subconscious while she was thinking about Fall. Images of brutalist architecture, for instance (paging Rick Owens). As a West London girl, Philo would be all too familiar with the long shadow of brutalist masterpiece Trellick Tower. That particular tower block was a stalwart of punk iconography, but so were zippers. Which happened to be a defining detail in this collection, opening up knees, running down calves, curving round torsos. They gave a literal edge to the clothes. There was even a hint of Trellick blockiness in the top that matched diagonal bands of black, white, and fluoro pink fur. The abstract track-pant stripes were, of course, quintessential Portobello Road, but, in London's Olympic year, they also had the sporty raciness of national pride.All of which pointed to a punky zest in Philo's Celine. When that same pink fur showed up as the last gasp of a collection of drop-shoulder jumbo-size overcoats, it was pause for thought. All the coats had big half-belts in leather. "Martingales," said Philo. "I love the sound of that word." She called them a "punctuation," but they gave the coats a big old party-time swag. That too felt like a memory of a moment when sharp girls threw vintage overcoats over cropped pants and tees—the moment, in fact, when people were listening to Portishead's "Glory Box," offered here in multiple versions as a soundtrack.The coats were the collection's headliner—there was wickedness in the one that spun to reveal a furry tail of red—but the women who look to Celine for a wardrobe update might find news in the ever-so-casually draped tops, which were actually artfully structured. There was silhouette action here. But no empire lines…yet.
3 March 2012
Phoebe Philo's Spring show for Celine has proven seriously influential on the pre-fall collections. The wide belts and Basque silhouettes that looked new on her runway back in October have become regular occurrences in presentations over the course of the last month. Her latest outing finds her exploring similar territory. We didn't see a lot of belts, per se, but the top worn under a black pantsuit had that same peplum look, and a white silk cady evening dress belled out from a high waistband. In general, Philo seems most turned on by slightly oversize shapes. The show-opening black coat had a generous cut with slouchy, overlong sleeves, and super-baggy only begins to describe a pair of black glove-leather pants she paired with a black and white spotted sweatshirt. Our guess is the tapered pair shown with a color-blocked turtleneck will be a more popular option at the Madison Avenue store that's slated to open at the end of this month.Other familiar ideas that she tweaked and re-floated here: crisp cotton pants and button-downs veiled in contrasting chiffon, and shift dresses that looked utterly spartan save for leather patch pockets. Fur was an important component of the collection; the most eye-catching was a leather-belted bicolor style that echoed the pattern of the silk ikat pants it topped. Philo's fans will be most turned on by the pinstripe pantsuit. It felt fresh in the way those peplums did last season.
8 January 2012
Since her debut at Celine two years ago, Phoebe Philo's legions of fans have gotten used to all things sleek and streamlined—be it the unadorned leather Classic box bag that launched so many imitators or the racing-stripe pants from Fall's car-inspired collection. But for Spring, Philo is thinking about shape. "It's just very sculptural, very three-dimensional," she said afterward. "We accentuated the bits that felt strong to accentuate, tried to create some new proportions."You can count Philo among the growing number of designers who looked to fifties and sixties couture silhouettes for inspiration—as evidenced by the full, rounded sleeves of the army jackets, the Watteau backs of her blouses, the peplums circling the hips. You can also put her on the short list of those who made the era look modern and new. Chalk that up to the luxuriously spartan sensibility of the collection: no prints, no appliqués, few unnecessary extras save for the leather envelope bags and platform ankle-strap pumps that women will find very necessary indeed next spring (so much for the theory that platforms are over).Basquewas the designer's word for the peplums that were the show's focal point. Sometimes she used wide belts to create the effect; other times the flaring piece of fabric was only partially attached to a pair of trousers at the hips. That might draw the wrong kind of attention, but the slightly A-line leather tees and the collared cotton shirts with the graceful pleats down the back are a different story. And Philo didn't save her proportion play for the upper half. This season's pants were as billowy and fluid as last season's were linear.It was an ambitious new message from a designer who's made a virtue of "reduced" fashion. Whether or not it has anything to do with the rumors she's been considered to replace Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton if and when he leaves for Dior, we'll have to wait and see.
1 October 2011
Phoebe Philo, who was in town to accept her International Award from the CFDA last week, wasn't in attendance at this morning's presentation, but she would've been chuffed, no doubt, to see all the Celine in the crowd. Of course, it's no news that Philo's accessories have becomethebags andtheshoes to carry and wear. It's safe to say, though, that she's done it again for Resort. The models wore white flatforms, but our money is on the patent gold pair hanging out on a shelf on a wall, for the way it combines the mirrored heel of Philo's first Resort collection for the house and the platform of Spring '10, two of the most coveted shoes in recent memory.As for the clothes, Philo is still pushing the wardrobe concept, covering the basics and then some. The thing is, in her hands nothing is ever basic: bold, or maybe even brave, is more like it. Philo's trench, for example, comes in gray plastic. Her three-piece suit (jacket, pants, button-down) is cut in an oversize floral—her minimalist phase may be over. And she's set the bar high on the overworked color-blocking trend by cutting a coat in a gridlike pattern of leather swatches, a statement maker if ever there was one.That structured topper aside, though, Philo is cultivating an interest in fluidity—see the soft, slouchy cut of her menswear trousers, the longer, looser silhouette of her skirts, and the collection's black and white striped pajama set. Apparently, she's also polishing her sense of humor, too; Philo included logo T-shirts in a lineup that otherwise took its fashion very seriously.
12 June 2011
Phoebe Philo has exited the rock festival and left its subtle influence on her Spring show in the rearview mirror. The designer's preferred mode of transportation: a luxury automobile. "Cars, the essential-ness of what it's like when you get inside a beautifully made car, and the power" is how she described the route she took to the new collection. Well, no matter how she got here, she's bound to rev city girls' motors this Fall, with a lineup that was long on statement coats, and offered a new idea about streamlined urban uniform dressing, too.To begin, the outerwear. Philo's first clever idea came on the first look out. The charcoal-black chesterfield had an interior strap that fastened below the bust to produce that swaggering, open-coat look we all love so much. A couple of bold color-blocked furs followed, and, in a style that we've seen on the street and also in the front row, the designer layered fitted jackets (hers came in puckered vinyl) over longer coats (here, shown in fur).As for the new Celine uniform, it's as simple as a snug white turtleneck and trousers that taper to a zipped ankle above pointy-toe loafers. In keeping with the driving metaphor, a lot of the pants were inset with leather—at the waistband or down the sides as tuxedo stripes. The turtleneck might be worn under a sporty chevroned sweatshirt or with a clean, unfettered blazer in that substantial wool felt. Yes, the wood-grain prints would've been better left on the sports car dashboard, but the car wash-pleated skirts had a fun zip to them. Philo's evening options were as reduced as ever, just a pair of strapless black bustiers that flared out over full-leg trousers.You can't call it fashion with a capital F; it's too classic and too subtle for that. Still, it's a testament to how utterly Philo has nailed the essence of what modern, style-obsessed women want right now that the Celine boutique here in Paris has been picked over and is practically empty. When today's collection lands in the store, they should expect a repeat.
5 March 2011
When Phoebe Philo accepted her Designer of the Year statuette from the British Fashion Council last month, she was wearing an all-in-one from the pre-fall collection she officially unveiled this week. Deceptively simple, it turns out on close inspection to feature an invisible, built-in corset that allows the strapless jumpsuit to fall in a graceful line from the bust to the hem of its full pants. As ever, the inner workings of Philo's garments are just as important to her as what's visible on the outside. The linings of dogstooth coats inspired by members of the 1950's British underground are bonded and taped—and eye-catching enough that you might be tempted to wear the pieces inside-out. As at her Spring show, fabric play was an important theme. Raw Japanese denim of different shades was pieced together with geometric precision to create a trompe l'oeil dress (one of Philo's favorite looks from the extensive collection), and Harris and Shetland tweeds came patchworked to create what the designer calls "modern urban camouflage."There's nothing more essential to the urban warrior's uniform, of course, than a statement coat, and Philo had plenty on offer in a sartorially driven collection that was very much in keeping with her evolutionary approach toCeline. Her acolytes will have a tough time choosing between a wool felt duffel paneled with iridescent PVC, and, on the more feminine side, a leopard-printed calfskin style or a shearling, goat, and curly lamb topper that will ring up for $6,800. There was variety in her accessories lineup, too. The popular Luggage bag is now available with a wider bottom and side straps, and Philo has introduced the Triptych top-handle bag, which has three zip-close compartments. She's also flexing her funny bone, adding gold etchings of makeup and loose change to cosmetics bags and coin purses, respectively. The seen-everywhere clogs have also gotten an update in new colors and with Velcro closures. In a word, or four, they look like money in the bank.
9 January 2011
Phoebe Philo's influence extends from the highest echelons of style—is there an editor in the front row who hasn't bought Celine's structured two-handle tote?—all the way to the high street. (At the fast-fashion stores in New York and London, her brand of minimalism rules.) Backstage, she insisted that she hasn't noticed—"Don't have time to shop," she said. Still, if what she did on her runway today wasn't an intentional rebuff to her copy artists, she's just made their jobs a whole lot more difficult.How? By embracing the artisanal. You saw glimpses of that in her Resort collection, which featured a great big blanket poncho worn over an evening dress. For Spring, it came across most strongly in two items: a vest and a coat, both beautifully handwoven in silk, apparently by a Frenchwoman who's been doing such things for decades. Other examples of Philo's new back-to-fabrics mentality: quilting, raw canvas and denim, even the long fringe on scarves. Prints are another area of interest the designer began exploring in the pre-collection. The geometric designs—riffs on vintage foulards—had a graphic sportiness that played counterpoint to the craft.But don't be fooled, there was plenty of that already-signature Celine sparseness—a feeling that was heightened by the predominance of white, ivory, and other pale shades. Still, Philo has loosened things up a bit. Pants are long and more flowy, with deep hems. And with the exception of a super blazer-cape hybrid, she's mostly rejected tailored jackets in favor of tunics, popover tops, and even a Baja jacket. "It's about freedom, getting away," she said of the show's relaxed, summery mood. A (just slightly) below-the-knee shift with plunging V's in front and back and a streamlined racerback all-in-one were as dressed-up as it got for evening.There will be some who miss the urbanity of Philo's first two collections, but this show qualifies as a well-considered success in its own right. It at once expanded the world of Celine (all the way to the rock festival) and confirmed Philo's mastery of the codes of her hugely influential brand.
2 October 2010
The first thing you noticed at Celine's showroom presentation today: the wall of accessories. In addition to reorienting fashion in a more minimal direction with her ready-to-wear, Phoebe Philo ushered in a new era of small, understated bags when she launched her boxy, shoulder-strap Classic bag last year. For Resort, she's added a new, larger Classic bag to the lineup, as well as fluorescents and exotic skins. The designer's approach, whether to It bags or to clothes, is evolutionary. Just because the rest of the world has latched onto her vision and even tried to give it a handy label—"utility chic"—doesn't mean she's ready to hare off in a new direction. On the evidence of this showing, she remains committed to building an iconic wardrobe, and there's little doubt that in the short time she's been at the French luxury goods house, she's designed some iconic pieces.The natural jute Philo used for Spring's popular A-line skirt and high-waisted, flaring pants reappeared here in the form of a collarless coat with subtle gold buttons and a sleeveless shift with not-so-subtle zips above the breasts. Her full trousers were cut in crisp white cotton and paired with a matching tunic (she also showed the look in tobacco brown). Her familiar evening all-in-one was demure in front and daring in back, with a low V cut. And the peplumed army jacket that you saw all over the front rows has been extended into a coat. An off-white silk satin halter gown suspended from a brass necklace summed up the collection—and Philo's MO—rather nicely. It was a subtle knockout.
13 June 2010
There could almost have been a Celine convention going on in the tennis club where Phoebe Philo showed her second collection for the label. Up and down the ranks, dozens of women were proudly displaying their Celine allegiance in camel coats, tux jackets, wide-legged high-waist pants, silk blouses, leather T-shirts, silver-heeled boots, and sandals. Almost the entire Spring collection was there somewhere, save for the sheer trousers (and it's a fair bet someone has those at home).That the above bears noting is a gauge of the huge significance of Philo's comeback. What she accomplished in restoring the status of rational, classy daywear last season has finally shattered the personal-purchasing moratorium that set in with the recession. Now women have seen what they want, impulse buying is back, and the atmosphere in the house was strumming with the collective will that Philo would follow up with more to keep the spending valves open.She did so in wave after wave of clothes that fed the pent-up desire for grown-up, flattering, simple but sexy dressing. In her own words: "Strong. Powerful. Reduced." Narrow navy funnel-necked coats and dresses, slim cropped-at-the-ankle kick flares, A-line skirts, and cream silk blouses started it off—all styled in a no-fuss manner with sheer black tights, riding boots, or high-heeled loafers. At a stroke, it carried the wholeness, simplicity, and confidence of a definitive look, perfectly judged and attainable.Part of the genius is the way Philo has reframed the sullied term "luxury" by harnessing the DNA of Celine—a Parisian bourgeois sportswear label that was at peak fashionability in the seventies. Her skillful deployment of leather is part of that. She did it with her placement of deep, smooth patch pockets on the sides of shifts and peacoats, as well as in her Helmut Newton-esque black patent wrap skirts and a black double-breasted military trench, belted with a domed brass buckle.The variety of Philo's outerwear was amazing—spanning a chic-casual navy hooded parka-coat hybrid, slim three-quarter jacket-coats, and a stunning cream teddy-bear shearling cape. Alongside that, a plethora of daywear options focused on separates—a refreshing breakaway from the dress obsession that has stuck fashion in a rut for too long. For evening, she sustained that sense of practical reserve in a cutaway pantsuit with a tunic fluttering beneath it, and two outfits with sculpted black paillettes.
None of it was body-baring, none of it showy. Yet it still exuded the calm sense of assured sexuality that adult women have been waiting for since Helmut Lang left the runway. The fact that Philo chose to stage this show in the very venue in which he presented his final collection can't have been a coincidence. In her own feminine way, she is picking up the cause for women exactly where he left off.
6 March 2010
Phoebe Philo has thrilled editors and retailers alike with the way she's suddenly re-energized minimalism for a new generation at Celine. Her latest effort, with its strong focus on outerwear, intense colors, and newly playful spirit, will keep the accolades coming. More so than the razor-focused Spring show, pre-fall is a collection of iconic wardrobe pieces. There's the bonded cognac leather poncho worn over a navy and red marinière tunic and cigarette-skinny stonewashed jeans; there's Philo's must-have high-waist flaring canvas trousers; and, of course, there's her de rigueur all-in-one, this season color-blocked in white and black for evening. Surprises came in the form of a not-so-basic cashmere sweater (intarsia'd on the front was a car, complete with "Celine" plates) and the shoes (bright primary-color suede numbers with natural leather wedge heels). A red cable-knit sweater and slim pants in the same vibrant hue would ensure that the woman who wears them stands out in a crowd, to say the least. Such is Philo's persuasive power, it's a good bet we'll see someone do it.
10 January 2010
Phoebe Philo has always had a great sense of who she is. That centeredness informs her way of designing clothes that reflect fashion as it's really lived, rather than anything arty or conceptual, and it gives her work the vitality so many young women identified with during her wildly successful pre-marriage, pre-family run at Chloé. Well, four years down the line, she's back—different house, different mid-thirties phase of life—but with possibly even more directness and focus at Celine. "I just thought I'd clean it up. Make it strong and powerful—a kind of contemporary minimalism," she said.The precise lines and simple equations of luxuriously sporty elements read as a brisk mission to make classy utilitarianism sexy: not "again," but for the first time for Philo's own generation. The pairing of sharp, whipcord-trimmed skirts, fine leather tees, piqué shirting, over-the-head cross-laced dresses, and modified military jackets was shot through with pragmatism and a crucial underlying appreciation of classic Parisian taste. At some points, the Chloé Phoebe was visible again. It was fully there in the super-flattering cut of her high-waist, wide-leg pant, and the genius of the wedge sandal that made every single look work. The difference was that the restrained palette of camel, beige, white, and black had the full stamp of a grown-up sensibility, one that also carried the bat squeak of Helmut Newton-esque eroticism in the semi-sheer nude fabrics and the plain yet provocative use of leather.Quite possibly that charge doesn't sizzle in the runway photographs, but every young woman in the room felt it. As the audience exited, a general cry of, "Oh, I just want to be like that," was ricocheting through the crowd. And that, as we seem to remember, is just what they said when Philo's Chloé went into vertical liftoff.
4 October 2009
Fashion has been waiting for some good news, and Phoebe Philo is here to deliver it. One look at the designer's confident, spot-on debut collection for Celine and it's clear how much we've missed her. At Chloé, which she left after her Spring 2006 collection to focus on her young family, she was known for her girl-friendly, effortlessly thrown-together aesthetic. Well, the girl has grown up. The Celine collection she showed in a bare loft space in Chelsea might better be described as woman-friendly, with lots of great-looking suits, chic cocktail dresses, and fabulous outerwear. (A cargo coat worn over a crystal-embroidered shift was a key look, and there were a pair of capes to delight the designer's longtime fans.) The more sophisticated, dressed-up vibe notwithstanding, these clothes are unmistakably Philo. First there's the color palette—lots of nude and black combinations, with hits of marine blue, navy, and utility green. Then there are the special details: the way, for example, a viscose faille top tips forward so the hem is higher in the back. "It's very subtle," she explained, "but it just looks right." Fabric development has always been important to Philo, too. "I love that it's a designer tuxedo, but it looks like sweatshirt material," she said of a marled gray wool silk jacket that was shown over a black charmeuse cocktail onesie."It's not about total looks," said Philo of her approach. "After my break, and with Celine in various different hands these last years, it felt better for me to work on an idea of a wardrobe than too much on trends. October will be for that. The collection is about interchangeable investment pieces. I worked hard to create things that will stand the test of time." Accessories are also under her purview, and in keeping with the sensible chic of the clothes, there wasn't a platform in sight. Instead, she showed ankle-strap sandals with sturdy mirrored heels and a smart pump-cum-bootie. As for the bags, the collection is large and ranges from oversize totes to classic envelope bags in crocodile or understated leather, the latter of which look like a good (read: reasonable) way for fashion fans to get their hands on the suddenly hot-again Celine.
10 June 2009
Ivana Omazic had the thankless job of going through with a collection after it was publicly announced that Phoebe Philo would be replacing her at Celine later this month. Like her LVMH stablemate, John Galliano at Dior, Omazic said tribal traditions were her starting point, and like him she didn't take the idea too literally. There were Polynesian-tattoo prints on silk organza dresses, "scarified" supple leather pants, and Masai beading on skirts. She touched on other trends, too, including transparency. The rest (from the hand-painted crinkled-voile wrap dresses to the jersey separates to a couple of suits) looked like it could've come from a tribe called BoBo…as in "bourgeois bohemian." You can call it commercial, but you can't fault her for that—not when retailers are cracking jokes like, "I have big news: We sold a dress!" Yes, there were some missteps, starting with an overly conceptual wedge shoe that was missing an instep, but Omazic deserves credit for making the most of her unpleasant situation.
1 October 2008
Creative director Ivana Omazic gave Celine's Resort collection a playful (if perhaps a touch gimmicky) feel by securing the rights to use five Charley Harper animal prints of fish, penguins, bank swallows, starlings, and flamingos. The menagerie was balanced by a host of more classic pieces, in a bright Miami palette, that featured curved lines, knot details, and other subtle nautical references.
3 June 2008
Celine is one of those minor-league labels that, in the absence of any fixed identity of its own, is destined to play along with the trends in order to keep up its claim to being a part of things. In that sense, its show acted as a kind of general weather forecast for winter. Heading this way: one-color silhouettes in double-face cashmere, funnel necks and eighties-type Montana-Mugler top-seaming, fur-zoned coats, armor influences, metallic paillettes, overlapping curviform cutting, statement neckpieces, and sculptured wedges in the footwear department.To give Celine designer Ivana Omazic her due, she accurately registered all these movements in the fashion ether, while giving them a kind of sports spin—a cashmere hoodie and fur-smothered parka here, a crocodile motorcycle jacket there, and a couple of luxury rucksacks inserted into the back view of raincoats. By the end, a gearchange for evening led the collection into goth-y monkey-fur jackets and long black fluted skirts—admittedly nothing to do with the way the show started out, but still a look that is taking off elsewhere. If there was nothing much "wrong" with all this—except for the long passage of overwrought layered skirted effects—it's still hard to see what, exactly, would make a customer want to shop this label above so many others who are doing more or less the same thing.
27 February 2008
Ivana Omazic may finally have figured out how to rebrand a label that didn't have much of an identity to begin with: Keep it simple. In the past, she's resorted to various gimmicks—accessories overload, tiger prints, transparency (OK, she might've been onto something there). But for Spring, these were all swept away. In their place was an unfussy focus on cut and shape.Her two motifs were whaleboning and crinolines, both given a high-tech, twenty-first-century spin. The first appeared on the outside of a deep V-neck dress, a zip-front jacket, and a T-shirt sweater, decorating and nipping the waist, and creating interesting yet subtle volumes at the upper back. The second, crinolines, gave undulating movement to swingy jersey skirts and dresses that would have otherwise hung flat. Silver necklaces that doubled as straps for maillots and dresses displayed a similar appreciation of a woman's contours.If there's a caveat to Omazic's new, streamlined approach, it could be that it's too quiet for the competitive runways of Paris. Now that she's established a solid foundation, her next challenge will be to build on it.
3 October 2007
Ivana Omazic added a sporty edge to her signature Parisian-chic mix at Celine for resort. In addition to elegantly tailored nipped-waist suits, many in an icy gray, and sharp trenches—the best in a raspberry shade with a subtle sheen—there were also red-and-white-striped polo dresses, logo sweaters paired with cuffed shorts, and daring maillots. Among the standouts were a sweet and easy blue-and-white tank dress with a black leather belt cinched high above the waist, and a decidedly more sexy black-cami-and-high-waisted-trousers look.
16 July 2007
Ivana Omazic found inspiration in Françoise Sagan's 1977 novelThe Unmade Bed. "I like a woman who's feminine, but not a doll. Someone who's seductive and beautiful, but a little wild," she said backstage. Sounds like a foreigner's idea of the archetypical Frenchwoman—and Omazic, who is Croatian, did focus on the classical elements of Gallic chic. There were narrow belted sheaths, smart wide-legged pants, and statement trenches (one in lipstick-red duchesse satin), all shown with leather newsboy caps with flaps that fastened below the chin in place of the more traditional silk scarf.The collection was an improvement over Spring's, in which the simple was made unnecessarily elaborate. There was an appealing lack of fuss in such Fall offerings as a black cape-back jacket with an A-line skirt, and a cocktail dress of midnight-blue sequins. But a tiger-print ponyskin skirt and a fitted tiger-print silk dress looked rather too much like an outsider's impersonation of the fictive femme fatale. Now that she's proven she can do the basics, Omazic's next challenge will be to move beyond the useful, but predictable, Parisian stereotypes and create an identity that's uniquely Celine.
28 February 2007
Today was Ivana Omazic's third go-round at rejuvenating the LVMH-owned house of Celine. That's no doubt a lot of pressure, especially for one so relatively young and inexperienced. It's almost no wonder that she latched on so tightly to a key spring theme, transparency. When she citedThe Unbearable Lightness of Beingin her program notes, though, she gave her critics some easy fodder. Because despite all of the parachute silk, iridescent faille, cloudlike taffeta, and translucent embroidery, this show felt oddly heavy.Weighing down today's jackets were her experiments in double lapels, one—you guessed it—transparent, and the other opaque. Likewise, smartly cut coats ended up looking tricky due to their visible darts, seams, and hems. Omazic was at her best when she put aside her concept—it's a rather familiar one by this point in the season, anyway—and concentrated instead on the hallmarks of Parisian style. She had the trench in an icy gray cotton-silk gabardine, the skirt suit in chalky python, and the L.B.D. in black silk organza with feathers dotting the bustier neckline. These, unlike many of the other looks, conformed to a cardinal rule of French chic: unfussy simplicity.
4 October 2006
What does Celine stand for? It's been two seasons since Ivana Omazic was installed at the French house, replacing Roberto Menichetti, who, in turn, took the design reins from Michael Kors. Her grace period is up, without a clear indication that she¿s capable of answering that tough question. Tough because, let's face it, both of her more seasoned predecessors were just as unsure about how the future of this once well-known handbag brand should proceed.To be fair, her new collection compared favorably to a spring line that suffered from too loud colors, a numbing repetitiveness, and an over-reliance on styling tricks. (Although this show had the latter, too, in the form of wooden bangles stacked seven to a wrist.) One positive development here was the way the herringbone suits with portrait collars and cropped pants riffed on the current menswear trend. Her trenches could stand up to those of her competitors, too. And the show's wide crocodile belts will make a sexy contribution to that crowded category.More frequently, though, Omazic went astray. In a season when fur is key, there were but two minks on her runway, and—curiously for a fall show—she sent out a seemingly endless parade of breezy chiffon, most of it in that fast-becoming-overexposed color combo, nude and black, or not much better, turquoise. And where were the bags? An oversize duffel does not an accessories business make. Her audience will take a lot of convincing, but let's hope the third time's the charm for this newcomer.
1 March 2006
Ivana Omazic, an unknown 32-year-old Croatian, is the latest designer charged with figuring out a raison d'être for Celine's presence on the Paris runway. Admittedly, it's a tricky task. In very recent memory, Michael Kors, with his humor and bounce, has passed through this way, followed by Roberto Menichetti, with his abstruse modernism. So this third debut needed to give a strong directive about just how an internationally resonant fashion collection could be constructed around a name that, back in the day, was mostly known as a conservative French lady's source of handbags and everyday separates.Omazic said she is inspired by that tradition. So what on earth was the audience supposed to think about the hot-orange dress, mohair crochet cardigan, and red floppy hat, worn with red kneesocks and high-heel sandals, that announced the opening of this show? (What to make, for that matter, of the fiery ball of Mars that was rotating at the end of the runway?) As far as could be detected, the "tradition" came later, in the canvas and tan leather-trimmed bags, the chain belts that circled cardigans, the cropped riding boots, and the box-pleated A-line skirts, some of which came with a chain detail slung below the waistband, center front.But if that's where the message lay, it was comprehensively drowned in a showing that included too much black, an overabundance of cut-out swimwear, and what seemed like endless reiterations of the tight-bodice, full-skirt dress that opened the show. Quite possibly, taken apart and seen on a rail, this collection will look far more attractive. But styled and presented like this, it just didn't work.
5 October 2005
A model in a black wrapped coat, violet shell, and teal pants, with a navy crocodile purse clutched in one hand, made a reasonable enough opening for Roberto Menichetti's second Celine collection. In a retreat from the perplexing debut he presented for spring, fall veered toward uncontroversial, middle-range clothes, and offered an uninterrupted view of the house's latest handbags.Indeed, enameled chain-link shoulder bags and squared-off crocodile doctor bags embellished with tiny buckled luggage straps often seemed to take precedence over the clothes. Maybe, though, that was the point. Michael Kors, the previous designer at the house, brought a degree of sporty internationalism to the label. But Celine was once a bastion of bourgeois fashion refusal, and finding a credible way to go forward presents a dilemma.Menichetti is not the dramatic type to reshape a house in his own image. So he compromised by sending out a polite take on stripped-down conservative dressing: suits and coats with dyed-fox collars, gored A-line skirts, flared jersey dresses, and little embellished knits. Staying with the safe and predictable, he elongated many of the same shapes for evening. This sort of luxe simplicity is difficult to carry off convincingly. For one thing, it requires perfect pitch in color, which Menichetti's jarring contrasts of orange, purple, teal, fuchsia, and black failed to achieve.
2 March 2005
So it's adieu to Michael Kors, andbonjourto Roberto Menichetti, who takes the helm of Celine for the first time for spring 2005, bringing with him a wildly different aesthetic. If the Celine woman, courtesy of Kors, projected the image of worldly traveler with a private jet, Menichetti's heroine is shaping up to be the one designing the aerodynamics. There were no summer-weight furs, no jewels that looked like they'd been picked up during a few transcontinental jaunts, no precious exotic skins. Correction: There were a few of the latter, in the form of crocodile satchels worn like shoulder bags and tiny lizard purses sportily slung around the body.The real change, of course, is that Celine has swapped Kors' American vision of sportswear for Menichetti's European one. It means that casual and often flamboyant luxury has been replaced with a far more sober and experimental vision. Menichetti pretty much stripped everything down to a wardrobe of streamlined and slightly futuristic basics: A-line coats, cocoon skirts, and boxy jackets. All of this came in a palette that looked like it might have been created in a laboratory, with saturated shades of fuchsia, citrine yellow, and lapis blue—an effect heightened by digitally manipulated floral prints.Perhaps that was as far as the experiment should have gone: No woman needs a striped sweater with an odd circular cutout on the back, or tricky pleating on a skirt, or strange, space-age headbands. Menichetti's simplest offering—a white tank top and wide ivory herringbone tuxedo pants—is a far safer bet as a template for the new Celine.
6 October 2004
So farewell, Michael Kors. In his exit collection for the label he's been designing since 1997, he conjured a straightforward roll call of ladylike personalities to wave good-bye to Paree. That meant, as he spelled out in his program note, "The sporty American simplicity of C.Z. Guest and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy mixed with the youthful European sophistication of Leslie Caron, Jean Seberg and Audrey Hepburn." In other words, no surprises, but a lot of luxe double-face camel-hair suits and coats, gray cashmeres, trim Donegal tweed, andjeune fillelace dance dresses.Kors leaves Celine as he found it—a bourgeois, conservative French lifestyle label with a reputation for quality. His parting gesture—melding snappy, abbreviated mid-nineties American sportswear with mid-fifties European iconic fashion standards—efficiently summarized the kind of job he has done here. With never a hair or a seam out of place, and always scrupulously attentive to the correct matching of shoe and bag to ensemble, his chignoned ladies advanced in neat-waisted, belted, top-to-toe propriety. Working in a classic palette of beige, brown, gray, and red, Kors made his most ultra-deluxe daytime statements with a short, chocolate crocodile double-breasted jacket, and another in form-fitting astrakhan. For night, he worked the current feeling for fifties circle skirts into romantic, black, strapless lace-covered dance dresses, in honor of Audrey. As Kors took his final bow, he saluted Lawrence Stroll, the backer of his own eponymous New York label. That's where Kors's future now lies; as for Celine, the next chapter remains to be written. A successor to Kors is expected to be announced in the coming weeks.
3 March 2004
Michael Kors must spend an awful lot of time seeking out inspiration at the beach because, when it comes to designing summer clothes, that's where he always seems to be. For his eponymous line it was Capri; for Celine, it's Tahiti. And very Gauguin it was too, with great hibiscus blooms, pampas grass, and yucca leaves covering everything from skintight jeans to silk shirts, swimsuits, and trailing head scarves.Tanned bodies were dripping in gold from the earlobes down: gold purses, gold shoes, you name it. That was the Monte Carlo effect—another muse of a beach for Kors. It's easy to imagine those healthy-wealthy ladies of Monaco decking themselves out in gold-chain prints with lots of matching accessories; perfect for a night in front of the roulette wheel at the casino.No one can deny this designer's gift for polish, nor his flair for optimism. As the last fleet of models strutted their stuff in dresses of hot pink, turquoise, black, and white columns suspended from chain-embroidered bodices, one couldn't help but smile. It was a fun trip, but since this is Kors's final collection as the house designer, it's anybody's guess what Celine's next stop will be.
8 October 2003
Wondering where the wild things are? The answer, at least this season, is on the runway at Celine.Michael Kors showed sequined zebra-striped bustier dresses, giraffe spots on pony bags, silver crocodile miniskirts and jackets, mink boleros and dramatic over-the-ear bonnets in Saga fox fur. But if the prints and pelts were straight out of the wilderness, the collection was most definitely designed for the urban jungle. The silhouette was neat, slim and dangerously short, while the palette was almost entirely black and white, with plenty of Chrysler Building-at-sunset sparkle. The clothes had a tough big-city-after-dark edge, with sharp silver zippers snaking their way up the back of second-skin pants, chains hanging from otherwise ladylike structured handbags, and white leather coats shot through with grommets.Has the Celine woman morphed into Debbie Harry circa 1981? Most definitely not. This was punk done for girls with clean hair and Birkin bags—the same sort of women who will appreciate Kors’s swingyBreakfast at Tiffany’ssatin trench coats and ice-blue fox puffer jackets.The uptown/downtown clash could be seen most clearly in the shoes: sky-high square-toe stilettos with oversize silver Pilgrim buckles, which Kors described as “ladylike from the front and nasty from the back.” “It’s all about contradiction,” he said of the collection. “It’s a good girl gone bad or a bad girl gone good. I’m still trying to figure out which.”
6 March 2003
Runway collections do many things: showcase intellectual experiments, play out designers' obsessions, display ideas for photographs—sometimes even present clothes that women might wear. The last on the list is, curiously, the rarest sighting of all. But Michael Kors certainly hasn't forgotten it at Celine. He turned in a spring collection that could actually come under the heading of true ready-to-wear—in the way an average person might understand it.Kors brought a splash of ethnic color and handwork from India, added a sprinkling of the '60s, a soupçon of military, and rooted it all in uncomplicated clothing. You want something to get about town in? You're—dare we mention it—going to work? And you're taking a holiday at some point? In his methodical American way, Kors checked off all the boxes for spring and summer, lending just enough trend to keep the clothes current.It was a tricky feat, and he handled it by choosing a vibrant palette of hot pink and orange against white, green and spice colors. Indian-influenced materials brought in shine and luxury via silver-embroidered duchesse satin, made into coats, pencil skirts and skinny pants. He toned it down for citywear, using floppy crinkled cotton for light trenches and little jackets and studded suede for slim skirts. Kors went on a bit too long with the swim and psychedelic-print beach pieces, but the collection was a statement of commerciality so unusual as to seem almost…brave.
3 October 2002
Michael Kors opened his Celine show with Caroline Ribeiro walking out in a long camel coat, black silk shirt with a matching fringed silk scarf, and a pair of what he calls "flight pants." It signaled the mood of a collection that was about well-cut, understandable sportswear with an international spin aimed at women with a taste for modern classics.The warm, rugged WWII flying jacket has functioned as an iconic taking-off point for many designers this season. Kors refined it into a beautiful sandblasted shearling patchwork coat and a series of variations on the bomber jacket, and extrapolated the antique leather look into skirts and almost luggage-sized hand-held totes. He also transposed elements of the classic pilot's jumpsuit—zippered pockets, military cottons—into casual pants and skirts in a soft gray waxed nylon and later into citified broadcloth.But this was no history-of-aviation theme show. Instead, Kors concentrated on workable wardrobe options like luxe wool denim jeans with a tapering flare, turtlenecks, belted leather jackets and slim ankle-length cardigan coats in cashmere knit. But while fur shrugs and a huge wine-colored fox worn by Carmen Kass added a special touch, something was missing from this well-behaved presentation. Michael Kors is one of the wittiest characters in the fashion universe, and Paris mourns the sense of humor he's applied in happier seasons.
7 March 2002
Michael Kors' sunny, low-key Celine collection was full of what he does best: pretty, practical summer staples that make an easy transition from the beach to a poolside soiree.Though Kors' program notes talked about his Mediterranean inspiration, it was the graphic designs of '60s Scandinavian cult label Marimekko that was brought to mind by the designer's large avocado-and-paprika sunflower-print jackets, coats and skirts. Kors interspersed his flower-power looks with breezy crochet shells, crepe jersey tank dresses and multistripe canvas shorts and shirts; rounding things out were flat sandals and a roomy tote. For cocktail hour there were snappy turquoise-, amethyst- and silver-beaded dresses that looked just as relaxed as the daywear.
8 October 2001
Michael Kors' New York equestrienne did not show up at Celine; instead, she turned to Nantucket and Berlin for sartorial inspiration.Kors' forte has always been relaxed sportswear—and his opening look, a distressed canvas jean, plaid shirtdress and reversible coyote fur, announced that this was to be a particularly pared-down moment. Checkered skirts and blazers, casual burgundy trousers, zip-up jackets and roomy trenches followed, sometimes accessorized with a plush fur neck-wrap.Kors changed gears from the rustic to the hard-edged with military overcoats, naval trousers, battle jackets and S&M-style leather caps that would've driven Marlene Dietrich to delirium. The eclectic melange continued with wisps of lingerie and rugged tweeds; evening looks consisted of long pleated gowns, fragile slip dresses and bed-ready camisoles worn with rugged boots, enormous bouclé coats and savage furs.
12 March 2001
After his relaxed collection of classic American sportswear in New York, Michael Kors hit the nail on the head once again at Celine.Kors' collection was inspired by visions of desert life, with rich safari and unstructured military themes. Vintage denim bombers and pale jeans, distressed leather trousers and officers' coats, suede sarongs and linen Sahara coats will be a welcome change for the ladies who donned last season'sDynasty-inspired collection. Naturally, Kors still provided the luxurious, highly refined basics his customers swear by: There was a sensational gold-leaf cashmere turtleneck, a sinful crocodile battle number and a divine bronzed wool military jacket. Kors also indulged in cashmere sweatpants and shirts which hadn't been done with such ease since Norma Kamali. Tortoise-print bikinis and safari dresses were also lighthearted and fun.Kors' collection proved that you don't have to stage a revolution to make a point. His clothes spoke of a quiet, sophisticated luxury that is perfectly in tune with the moment.
9 October 2000
To the rousing chords of the theme music fromDynasty, Michael Kors took Celine on a playful romp through the high-excess '80s. It was a case of "move-over-Nolan-Miller" as Kors paid tribute to the campy deluxe looks once worn by Alexis Carrington and her rivals. You want luxury Dallas-style? Kors has it in spades. That black-and-gold-brocade Anna Karenina jacket? How about adding sable cuffs, collar and center banding? And why not swag golden chains as fastenings across it too. A chocolate Persian midi coat? Hem it with deep bands of cocoa mink. That black Swarovski-beaded shirt? Why not wear it with a leopard-beaded and ostrich-hemmed skirt.Kors claimed Oscar nominee Chloë Sevigny as his primary inspiration. Although Sevigny is barely old enough to have experienced the decade firsthand, she has an insouciant way with great clothes of recent vintage—like '70s Saint Laurent pieces—that place her ahead of the fashion curve. Kors revisited the Saint Laurent ideal via off-the-shoulder satin print gypsy dresses in café au lait, paisley or leopard-print satin. Bold Chanel overscale tweed weaves also put in an appearance.Kors is obviously targeting the glamorous young Park Avenue princesses who want to play dress-up in clothes they (just) remember their moms wearing. And who knows—Mom herself might be tempted to relive the glory moment too.
28 February 2000
Getaway glamour was the theme for Celine's striking presentation: Jennifer Lopez meets Jackie O. in St. Tropez, of course, for fun in the sun. Duran Duran blared on the speakers as Michael Kors sent out a procession of hand-bleached silk denim ensembles--a new and luxurious take on acid wash, that reliable '80s favorite, this time around with matching oversized travel bags. Dresses and tops in suede and jersey followed. The fabrics were as light and easy to wear as the colors Kors favored: watercolor blue, pale turquoise and bright chartreuse. Kors' penchant for easy luxury extended to the glove-leather vests, chrome-studded cashmere T-shirts, and crystal-encrusted sarongs--which would work equally well on the beach or as evening wear by a bonfire. The accessories were no less striking: clear Lucite bracelets, stiletto mules and, of course, logo-emblazoned totes. It was an accomplished, playful collection punctuated by Kors' trademark simplicity of design and the richness of the fabrics he employed.
6 October 1999