The official CELINE thread

[leclutchjames]

Where’d you get the photos!

just kidding I don’t read

 

[thorns]

 

[thorns]

Where’d you get the photos!

just kidding I don’t read

 

[thorns]

Top 3 favourite looks from fw21

 

[GG Allin]

Thanks for the photos thorns.

 

[SirGrotius]

Agreed, thank you for the transmission!

 

[thorns]

Hedi Slimane Makes the Fashion Equivalent of Botox

Celine's Gen Z-inspired clothes happen to be excellent Gen X bait.

t.co

Celine's fountain-of-youth clothes double as brilliant Gen X and Boomer bait.

How do y'all feel about this?

The funny thing about all the fuss over Slimane is that his clothing is probably the most intelligently merchandised stuff on the planet. He is making clothes to sell them, proving with every one of his choices why you need them. The approach isn’t empathetic like Prada or The Row (whose feeling for their customers probably comes from the fact that the designers are female), but it’s considerate. Here’s what I mean: yes, teenagers get dressed by putting a turtleneck under a sweater, a hoodie, a jean jacket, and a leather jacket. But this manner of styling also shows product perfectly.

I'm a fan of all the layering.

So how does Slimane still pull this off? There are a lot of contributing factors—money is a big one—but his biggest advantage may be the way he simply understands that fashion is about desire. Remember desire? Remember just really wanting something? I think Slimane knows that rich people, maybe more than anyone else in the world, just want to look young. Some people believe his obsession with youth is cynical—he’s a designer in his 50s, making clothing about people who were barely alive. But he knows the approach is nostalgic—as the press notes stated, Slimane visited Chambord as a teen, which surely signals some lost longing for youth. And more than anything, a man in his 40s, 50s, and 60s—the people who are really buying Celine, if my recent visits to the store are anything to go by—want to look young! They don’t feel goofy wearing a motorcycle jacket or skateboard trousers—and what’s more, they don’t look it. The pieces may be spiffily shown on the runway by those pink-haired, unicorn earringed-models, but take them apart and you find hip, wearable clothing.

Thoughts?

It helps, of course, that the whole TikTok fashion style started with the guys who are now Celine’s primary customers—they were the men who, in the late 80s and early 90s, started mixing plaids, leathers, studs, and so on, which flowed to the east, was remixed by Korean and Chinese teenagers, and then traveled back to Gen Zers. Slimane is feeding back to them their dream in the world’s finest materials. At last: the fountain of youth! It’s the fashion equivalent of Botox—and there’s absolutely nothing cynical about it. It is, yes, nouveau romantique. After all, everyone feels better after getting a little work done.

I agree that it traveled to Asia, got remixed, and now sent back to Western Gen Zers. Hedi's Celine fits so comfortably in Asia. It feels so wacky and experimental in North America. For North America, fw13 is already very out there.

 

[thorns]

Wool coat and riding boots. What a missed opportunity for Hedi to only include one look with the riding boots for Teen Knight Poem. Knights should be wearing riding boots for war. I guess the other models didn't fit the feeling enough for him to let them wear it. Here is me re-styling certain looks with the riding boots.

 

[kieran84]

I'm not going to worry too much about the new direction. The blueprint for all the basics is already there and I don't expect them to suddenly stop selling them. The bulk of my wardrobe is permanent collection or basics from Celine and I couldn't be happier with them. I just hope they pay some attention to that area. There's certain things, for example something like the suede trapper jacket, that will just sell themselves if they release them.

@thorns I still think they're moving styles out too quickly. The various Jacno 30 options for example should have just remained on the website instead of going to sale. They also seem to be missing items that could be big sellers for them. The tournon blazer would be one example off the top of my head.

 

[thorns]

Seeing how skinny jeans are tucked into the riding boots makes skinny jeans tucked into rangers look trash.

 

[thorns]

I still think they're moving styles out too quickly. The various Jacno 30 options for example should have just remained on the website instead of going to sale. They also seem to be missing items that could be big sellers for them. The tournon blazer would be one example off the top of my head.

Good points!

 

[kieran84]

And this doesn't really look like the kids I see around who are wearing oversized clothes to me. The kids look way cooler, even in the most basic looks of high street 90s jeans, air force, and North Face. I hope Celine does well with it though because we all want Hedi to stay around.

 

[Malour]

View attachment 1552394

The last bit annoys me. Who else would you make fashion pieces for? Older people buy fewer things (higher quality/tailored pieces) but they want to stay young. It is called "cool kids" for a reason, even Oscar Wilde said it with "youth is the only thing worth having".

 

[Louis Louis]

Don’t you think that people targeted by this kind of designs are less easily « brand captive » than the old guard ( guided by Thorns the Librarian) ? It is an extremely volatile population and it may be a problem.

 

[thorns]

Chinese Hedi fan posted the following on Weibo. This is my own re-translation of the google translate result that I got.

I watched the Celine fw21 show last night. I was impressed by Hedi's complete and progressive aesthetic presentation. I watched the video several times back and forth and chatted with my friends for a while. I was also browsing social media and was happy to see some voices that disagree with me. This prompted me to think carefully and discuss with my friends whether or not "Hedi Slimane’s work is completely no longer his own style, or that he has fallen.” In the meantime, I had some new thoughts. I will not discuss the details of the clothes itself, but only discuss some things related to the design. I will share my humble opinion here, and welcome your suggestions.

The first new and interesting idea I got was to use food, as an analogy, to compare with Hedi Slimane's creation. Last year, there was a good Japanese drama "Tokyo Grand Hotel". I liked Kimura Takuya, who is no longer young but still handsome, and the intellectual and generous Kyoka Suzuki, as the protagonists, telling the story of their process of earning Michelin stars for their restaurant. Takuya Kimura plays a well-known French chef who is skilled in Paris, but because of a big mistake, he never got the chance to be a chef there. He and Suzuki Kyoka returned to Japan to open a French restaurant and vowed to create a Michelin-starred restaurant. After returning to Japan, Kimura initially believed that French cuisine should use more expensive imported ingredients to reflect the standard French style, rather than local ingredients with different flavors that deviate from traditional French cooking. However, in subsequent creations, Kimura was forced to use local ingredients for various reasons (half it was because the ingredients used in traditional French cuisine were considered not innovative enough), but he found that the combination of the use of local ingredients and French cuisine techniques produced unexpected surprises for him. Since then, he has tried more different techniques to make French meals that are not so traditional and become more experimental and conceptual. Incorporating new elements actually means spending more time and energy on more attempts to create dishes than merely copying tradition.

Hedi Slimane is an unsurpassable benchmark for rock style fashion. From the millennium to the present, we will wear tight pants, narrow suits, and pointed shoes. He has made great contributions. For him, the parts like traditional French food may be 100% super skinny pants and super slim suits. When he does not do these classics, some people will find what he creates to be a mess that is unacceptable. However, going back to the analogy, one of the important criterion for the Michelin star rating is innovation. And I always believe that Hedi Slimane is a designer. The designer is doing different things and designing new products. If you only do one thing, then you are a craftsman, not a designer. If you cook sushi for a lifetime like Ozu Yasujiro, then you may also become the god of sushi and a super master in this field. If Hedi Slimane only makes one type of jeans, he is absolutely capable of designing the most perfect skinny jeans and pointed leather boots for people of all sizes, then he can become a super skinny jeans god. But at that time he was no longer a designer, but a craftsman with the spirit of a craftsman. LVMH also would not find a person like this to be the creative director of a luxury brand that needs to at least reach the second tier. Perhaps many people have overlooked this point, including myself. If you only love the skinny jeans and short jackets made by him, you can ignore his show. Anyway, every year there are evergreen skinny jeans and short jackets and pointed boots. You don’t need to watch his show and don’t care about the changes in his overall design aesthetics.

When he first entered CELINE, I also felt doubts and disappointments. In high school, I got into Hedi because of those skinny jeans and pointed boots. But as I realized that he kept on making the same ideas, I started to become disappointed. In fact, when I saw him make new and different things, I was actually very excited. It is obvious that as a designer, he has achieved commercial success in Dior and Saint Laurent. He certainly has enough skills and ability to continue to do things in that style, but he did not continue to copy himself, but went to play new things. This is actually not an easy task. CELINE is a big brand, not a niche independent designer brand. If you like Ziggy Chen, or a smaller designer brand like BED JWFORD, you can only use it every season. Make minor changes such as a little fabric change or a little tailoring change to continue his own style. Big commercial brands, like Dior, Saint Laurent, and Celine, need to stimulate consumers. They need to generate buzz and traffic. If one day Hedi Slimane owns his personal brand, he does not need to report to the group if he owns the power, and what he does will be completely different from now. Moreover, I personally think that in my interpretation, I think Hedi Slimane is enjoying the change. He lived through the best years of rock music, grew up listening to rock music, and he even made clothes for Bowie. And now Tiktok is popular, the world is very different from the past, and the changes in popular culture are also changing rapidly. This is also the era of Hedi. I think he is very sensitive to these changes, and I think he enjoys it. Youth culture and popular culture are inseparable, and scholars studying fashion history in the years to come will surely associate the dress of our generation with social media. For an absolute youth culture fanatic like Hedi Slimane, I think he must understand that this is part of the youth culture of this era. He keenly captured some of the elements of the culture, refined and kneaded it, just like cooking with new ingredients and superb craftsmanship, he finally produced his works in recent seasons. I think from this perspective, he really loves youth culture and the teenagers he has always loved.

Maybe Hedi is watching those skinny Soft boys and EMO kids with Douyin at home, indulging in their beauty and then grinning. During the dancing kids season, I think the taste of the videos he made is simply superb. His ability to grasp visual effects is really superb. This season’s videos are also great, including the previous movies in Dior and slp. I am a photographer who can hold exhibitions. The brand vision he is in charge of can't fault it, except this time my friends and I unanimously complained that the shot was cut too fast and the clothes were not seen enough. Another interesting point is how to understand Hedi's remake of [Readymade] and the ingenuity of his own stylist. My English is very poor, but I just happen to know that this means "ready-made", and when I read the latest "Poems of Young Knights", the word popped out in my mind, plus the French cuisine theory. Some thoughts. Among the collocations of the young knights, one point that cannot be ignored is those clean and beautiful white shirts with pie crust collars. It is not surprising that the shirts with pie curst. The strange thing is that Hedi uses them to match all kinds of messy things. Outerwear: round neck sweaters, denim jackets that are not gentle at all punk, street zipper hoodies, sports jackets, tough leather jackets, etc., or stack these clothes in a chaotic order. When I saw it, I was actually quite surprised. All the items mentioned above are not necessarily matched in theory, and we don’t always wear them like this. But when Hedi puts these matches together, they change. Be harmonious and orderly. From here on to relate it back to cooking, for example: Do you know the taste of eggplant (aubergine)? Do you know what chocolate tastes like? Do you know what chicken liver tastes like? Have you eaten it, right? Then do you know what the three of them add to make a dish and put it on a plate? I really don't know this, right? And in "Tokyo Grand Hotel", Takuya Kimura tried these three kinds of raw materials that sounded unmatched many times in different ways. After the above three seemingly irrelevant ingredients were handled ingeniously, without adding too many complex seasonings, they achieved the ultimate flavour signature dish in their restaurant. Hedi did the same thing. If you want to make this dish, first of all, don't use too much of your three ingredients, but also look at the matching skills, who is the protagonist, who is the side dish, what sauce to add, and how to make it. Then, you have to rely on your good hand skills to knead the three different flavors to make a brand new one, the ingredients in it that everyone has seen, but together there are things that no one has eaten.

In my opinion, even the last season that was generally dismissed by old-school fans, it was a sportswear made by only Hedi Slimane. The sportswear made by others is different from his. Because even if it is the same sports style, it is completely different after Hedi, an obsessive-compulsive control freak. Hedi’s sport wear has also undergone deliberate and subtle treatment in fabric, version, and color. The sportswear he makes is a cut above the rest. The same is true this time, every single product is an existing ready-to-wear product, but the combination method has not been seen before. I think this is pretty awesome. This is not a simple matter. We have all underestimated the importance and difficulty of styling design. Good taste cannot be bought. In summary, I think he has not fallen from grace, but actually pushed himself to create something beyond what has been seen before. The design aesthetics of his philosophy is constantly evolving with the times.