Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Courtesy of Celine
Celine occupies a beautiful old building on Rue Vivienne in Paris, not far from Jean Paul Gaultier’s former studio, and a stone’s throw from the Bourse, home of the Pinault art collection. The neighborhood has always been cool. A massive arrangement of yellow blooms, dotted with feverfew, greeted guests in the entrance, while overhead in the courtyard, a giant red scarf print was stretched between the walls, providing minimal cover from the threatening skies. By 3 p.m., on Sunday, as Celine’s new designer, Michael Rider, showed his stuff, it was a dripping piece of silk and the umbrellas were up. (In reality, most people were seated inside the building.)
We’re in the long season of debuts as half a dozen or so major houses in Europe change creative leadership. Jonathan Anderson recently showed his first collection for Dior, and he attended Rider’s opening, as did Raf Simons of Prada. There are new designers at Gucci (Demna, who shows his final Balenciaga collection on Wednesday), Chanel (Matthieu Blazy), Margiela (Glenn Martens), and Bottega Veneta (Louise Trotter). But the talent turnover will be relatively meaningless, in the long run, if brands don’t adjust for the bigger changes in the world over the past few years, changes that particularly affect the communication of ideas and values.
One of the strikingly up-to-date things about Rider’s collection is that it didn’t look especially French as the designs did under his predecessor, Hedi Slimane, who has a talent for nailing the tastes of the bourgeoisie. Do we really need more classy French clothes with a twist? Do we even want to hear that language anymore? I felt something of the same about Anderson’s use of Lee Radziwill’s portrait by Warhol as a reference for his Dior men’s collection. Did anyone on his team say to him during the design process, no, don’t use that stale socialite image? Like: Move on. People want to see things that reflect today, a world of multiple sensibilities and tensions.
From left: Photo: Courtesy of CelinePhoto: Courtesy of Celine
From top: Photo: Courtesy of CelinePhoto: Courtesy of Celine
Rider’s clothes had a strong feeling of American sportswear as well as French style, expressed cheekily with the cliché of a silk scarf tucked into a handsome overcoat. Rider grew up in the States. He studied at Brown and was briefly a schoolteacher before moving to Paris and snaring a job with Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga. He then worked at Celine with Phoebe Philo. From 2018 to 2024, he was creative director at Polo Ralph Lauren in New York. His stories about Lauren’s advice at Polo about “making it real” are fascinating. Why argue with greatness? But apart from the realism in his Celine, and the broad-mindedness now required of an international label, the thing that most impressed me about this debut was its variety. We’ve seen collections from top houses in recent years (some of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s at Dior, for example, and also from Chanel and Gucci) that were essentially a hammer to a nail. The same silhouettes and shapes repeated over and over, often in the same three or four hues.
Not so with Rider. He must have offered several dozen distinct looks, all while holding (more or less) to a Celine aesthetic. There was the opening outfit, a camel blazer that seemed to bunch and twist with deliberate gawkiness over a crisp blue-denim shirt and a pair of skinny jeans. Then there were brightly colored blazers and leather bombers with wide, pleated trousers, the cuffs tucked into patent-leather boots or a kind of boxer’s bootie. There were styles with a chaste, elegant feel, mostly in black, like an oversize cardigan knit jacket with a big safety pin worn over a doubled white cotton shirt and white turtleneck, and a priestly slim black coat.
From left: Photo: Courtesy of CelinePhoto: Courtesy of Celine
From top: Photo: Courtesy of CelinePhoto: Courtesy of Celine
Photo: Courtesy of Celine
How about a modified rugby shirt with a single bold stripe, worn over a turtleneck? Rider stuffed the show with other novel separates, like a red tartan shirt (good as a wardrobe mixer) and a cropped faux-fur chubby in black or white. His evening clothes, in black or white, were refreshing, in part for their stark, sporty simplicity. He also carried forward Philo’s abundance of jewelry, mostly in the form of charms and chunky rings. It’s just another way to engage your eye and also play a bit. If there was a (minor) fault with the show it was the styling (by Brian Molloy). It felt a bit heavy-handed at times, its virtuosity showing.
From left: Photo: Courtesy of CelinePhoto: Courtesy of Celine
From top: Photo: Courtesy of CelinePhoto: Courtesy of Celine
Photo: Courtesy of Celine
Afterward, Sidney Toledano, the president of the LVMH fashion group, which includes Celine, observed that people are hungry for novelty: “Branding is important, but people want newness.” Rider gave them plenty of choice as well as inspiration. More than that, he forced a break with the way things were done at Celine, not a huge break, perhaps, but enough to signal his awareness of the moment. As he said backstage, “Part of what I’d like to do is let [the brand] breathe a bit.” That will initiate more surprises still.
