Celine Homme SS24, titled Delusional Daydream unfolded fashionably late — five months belated in the Monte-Carlo Opéra Garnier in Monaco. But the timeline bears little significance for a creative director like Hedi Slimane.
As a designer who has largely shaped much of modern menswear, injecting a spirit of hedonism in all its best forms, Slimane’s latest collection for Celine reflects the prevalence of that pioneering energy, decades on.
Slimane — the godfather of skinny jeans and as-skinny ties that came to popularity in his Dior Homme era — hunkered down on his renown for a liberating, androgynous aesthetic. Movement and autonomy echoed this: as the short film unravelled in billowy satin and stiffer leathers, references taken from the 17th-century French court, and well, his career. Loyalists will understand the Maison’s creative director for his adoration of crafting elusion, with bits of his life divulged through HediSlimane Diary. A reminder of his tenure as a photographer, artist, curator and music fiend, the show was casted, set-designed, styled, shot, and then directed; not to mention have its soundtrack curated by him — encompassing Hedi-favourites of LCD Soundsystem, and before its cancellation, YvesTumour, TheLastDinnerParty, Peaches.
Punctuated by a performance by ballet dancer Laurids Seidel, the Slimane-shot show mirrored the practices of discipline and restraint, and a resultant fleeting freedom. Angular geometric cuts of fabric were combined with slouchier, languid silhouettes. Crystallised halters were crafted with wider weaves, chest-bare tops inflected with undulating capes, while tube tops were dressed up with bows; which served the singular seasonal demarcation that reflected a 2023 influence.
So as CelineHommeSS24 got more androgynous, spangly and gritty; it perhaps leans less toward the return of the IndieSleaze phenom, but instead restates the everlasting legacy of Slimane. After all, given the performance of it all, maybe Celine Homme’s latest underscores the ideal that life is a show — and if so, Slimane wants us to watch and remember.
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