Two glossy black panels opened and revealed an interior resembling a kaleidoscopic mirror. The moment I saw the first model clad in a black and white polka-dot mini dress I thought, “This is a new era. Farewell to Phoebe’s Céline. She will be missed.” This is clearly not your mother’s closet and is apparent that it’s for a “younger” audience, be it literally young or young at heart.
A lot of people, including me, thought throughout the show that this was another version of Hedi Slimane’s Saint Laurent and Dior Homme. Same play of silhouettes but still works for a lot of people; there were also rare appearances of “real” colours in the collection. Phoebe’s aesthetic isn’t seen anywhere in the collection. The clothes’s categories were separated from day and night looks, or even make it day-to-night looks if you will, but the gender equality is there. Women in Hedi’s signature slim fitted suits, men (or at least I think it’s a man that I saw lool) in embellished dresses with a lot of fascinators on their heads with a lot of rock n’ roll vibes that Hedi channels with his intertwined affinity for fashion and music. Sadly it’s a predominantly white casting with little to no diversity at all.
Now I’ve been seeing lots of hate comments about Hedi’s from the time he dropped the accent from the “e” and changed the logo’s spacing until his first show, and probably in the next ones. To be honest, those ones who have the most hateful comments are the quickest ones to succumb to the new pieces once it hits stores. History is repeating itself, or Hedi repeating history from changing the branding, to applying his own aesthetic and rebooting a brand, to people hating on him, to a brand having a massive annual turnover, to people willing to kill over his pieces. That’s one thing about Hedi, he knows what people wants, everything he makes is appealing.
LVMH’s decision is just for them to have something that Kering had when they appointed Hedi as Saint Laurent’s designer. It neither made the headlines nor made a buzz when Stefano Pilati was the chief designer. Same way when Marc Jacobs was in Vuitton until Nicolas Ghesquiere took over. It’s always a fashion game of musical chairs everytime; but you know, all of it boils down to business. Numbers will always be numbers, business decisions sometimes mean you have to care for the numbers more than your customers’s feelings just to meet the numbers. A
That’s the thing about being assigned to a new maison, it becomes your own so you can do whatever you want with it. It’s just what Hedi and Phoebe did when they were appointed in Celine in their own times. I mean would you like remnants of the previous tenants visible in the flat you’re moving in to? No. You’d want to redecorate everything to your liking and for you to feel at home.
They were both just doing their own thing, applying their own design aesthetics. We get lost souls who look like they could eat a massive sandwich in the new Celine while we got a classy, intellectual women in Phoebe’s CÉline. Two polar opposite designers who are very good in their craft who are just doing their own thing. It’s just that we got more used to Phoebe’s Céline that makes us resist the change that Hedi brought to the brand. One thing’s for sure—Hedi is back in power. We missed you.
L O R E N Z O Y A M B A O 