Once More, Celine’s Hedi Slimane Makes Timeless Codes Cool Again
Bazaar contributor Sofia Celeste explores how the creative director channeled present-day French identity and pandemic-era life into the house’s Autumn/Winter 2021 collection
“Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life,” wrote 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud in Song of the Highest Tower. Rimbaud, a rebel of his time who distanced himself from the French literary coterie, would perhaps, in a contemporary context, resonate with a fashion non-conformist like Celine’s Hedi Slimane.
Maybe that’s also part of the reason why the 53-year-old Dior Homme and Yves Saint Laurent alum channelled Symbolist poets Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, and Paul Verlaine in his Autumn/Winter 2021 runway show entitled Parade. Echoing their vision of youth disquietude for an entirely new generation in clothing that blurred classic vestimentary rules.
In a fashion show captured by drone cameras at the Château Vaux-le-Vicomte, some 55 kilometers outside Paris, Hedi unfurled a narrative of present-day French identity and pandemic-era life. True to form, he imbued this perception with layers of youth references – from street style to collegiate prep. In this version, the Celine girl seems to have roused from a lockdown-induced slumber, this time woker and wiser, with deliberately tousled hair and a fresh face devoid of any artifice.
Models marching through the manicured lawns, over ivy-coloured walls and past romantic fountains envisaged by landscape architect André Le Nôtre centuries ago, advanced with the determination of someone who has just been released from prison. Ready to finally enjoy everyday wonders and is single-minded about beginning this next chapter as soon as possible.
Cocooned in tailored wool coats, leather jackets, and vests over a hoodie (the ultimate cultural marker and symbol of political injustice), she beguiles with underlayers of silver lamé and sequins. She forges ahead with the vigilant resolve of someone en route to a clandestine rooftop party past curfew.
Hedi’s work is paramount as power-lunch looks accented with gold buttons on military-style tunics or the links in handbag chains. A wintry array of parkas, camouflage puffers, and denim or sheepskin blousons that warmed bare legs played out like a continuation of the previous Celine menswear show, in which Hedi’s chevaliers paraded over the Loire Valley’s Château Chambord’s battlements.
In channelling the prominent Symbolists, famous for their sense of fluidity and use of imagery to convey the state of the poet’s soul, is Hedi not himself, a poet in the same vein? Conveying this sense of youth-interrupted state of melancholy, he shows that his millennial bourgeoise rebel has perhaps come to terms with the fact that her clubbing days are a thing of the past and solitude has shown her that human contact, convivial moments, and interaction with nature are each something to cherish, as humanity reconstructs a new, post-pandemic world.
Symbolist poetry was equally woven into the electro soundtrack and the lyrics of Un Daydream sung by artist and musician Regina Demina. Rendering the anthem of adolescent angst ever-more palpable for a virtual audience as she sang in French about her adoration for a boy she connects with only through her cell phone.
As Baudelaire said in his poem The Enemy, “My youth was but a dark-aired hurricane, pierced by an eye of sun from time to time.” A reminder that good times are fleeting and to cherish them now more than ever. Even if they are found through screens or experienced from a distance.
A message brought home by the final line of Hedi’s sartorial poem. When an array of fireworks is shown far in the distance as a model in a scintillating hand-beaded crinoline cocktail dress sheds a tear from under her baseball cap. A sign that happy days will be here again but the indelible memory of this uncommon time will also live on in our souls.
Photography: Greg Adamski. Fashion Director and Styling: Anna Castan. Model: Tya Gohin Gagneaux at Women 360. Hair & Make-Up: Melanie Meyer at MMG. Producer: Johana Dana. Stylist Assistants: Camila Melendez and Duaa Gomaa. Producer’s Assistant: Ines Guendouz. Illustrator: Ania Augustynowicz
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s October 2021 issue.