Don’t Mourn Old Celine, Celebrate It

As someone who likes to take fashion with the joy, frivolity and pinch-of-salt attitude that it should be taken with, the evening of Friday 28th September was the first time I had felt a little wounded by a designer. Disappointed. Deflated. Why? It was the night that Hedi Slimane showed his debut collection as Creative Director of Parisian fashion house Celine.
 
In the weeks preceding the show he’d already ruffled feathers; erasing the brand’s Instagram history and removing the accent above the first e in the brand name “to enable a simplified and more balanced proportion, evoking the Celine collections of the 1960s where the accent wasn't used often”. It was akin to what he’d done as helmsman of Yves Saint Laurent; removing ‘Yves’. But all this was just preamble to what would take place at Hôtel des Invalides in Paris at the tail end of Paris Fashion Week. What ensued was a collection that looked strikingly similar to those he’d presented at Saint Laurent; overtly ‘sexy’ and worn by moody-looking models, and nothing like the Celine we’d become known and loved over the past ten years under the directorship of Phoebe Philo.
 
What Philo did to the once-sleepy brand was remarkable. She created an aesthetic that defined the last decade and irreversibly changed many a woman’s attitude towards fashion. She was a strong woman designing for strong women, creating clothes without pretence or suggestion; minimalist-yet-impactful silhouettes, timeless design with an edge, refreshingly devoid of the male gaze. They were clothes to be loved and worn endlessly, transcending trends while simultaneously starting them. Stan Smiths, Crombie coats, furry Birkenstocks – we have Philo to thank for all of them.
 
But any sense of a lasting legacy was seemingly wiped away in 15 mere minutes by Slimane, like chalk on a blackboard, and bitterness from all angles ensued. Models were barely off the runway before the fashion press expressed their disappointment; taking to social media to blast the collection, calling everything from “tone deaf” to “toxic”. But, as the saccharine quote so ubiquitous on Instagram goes, don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.