CELINE Goes into the Underground with LA COLLECTION DU PALACE PARIS SYNDROME
With a knack for melding music and fashion, Hedi Slimane continues to astound, surfacing the charms of the underground into the limelight.
Just like leaves in autumn, fashion, too, must shed its notions of spring to welcome something darker. As light becomes scarce, shadows consume the remnants of vernal warmth as Celine introduces its Fall/Winter 2023 collection.
The transatlantic equivalent of Studio 54, Le Palace, takes center stage this season. Entwining his cherished memories of raging through the nocturne, Hedi Slimane presents Celine’s latest collection within its iconic walls. Host to an eclectic range of dazzling personas—including Andy Warhol, Grace Jones, Karl Lagerfeld, and Yves Saint Laurent—Slimane now adds his name to its legendary lineup. An ode to the electroclash and electronic rock of the 2000s, the collection served as a magnifying glass for Slimane to expand on his previous exploration of varying music scenes. Set to the score of underground musical sensation Suicide, Slimane once again overlaps the worlds of music and fashion to deliver an unforgettable presentation. Sultry groans coated in heavy synths reverberated throughout the 17th-century theatre; it was moody, enrapturing, and exactly everything we could dream of Celine.
Entering Paris’ revered nightclub, we are submerged in a subversive world of stone-cold rocker chic glimmering with a sheen of indie sleaze. Last season, Celine brought us Dysfunctional Bauhaus. We got a whopping dose of smooth rock and roll charm reminiscent of Johnny Depp in Cry-Baby. Ultra-slim cigarette trousers were topped off with shoulder-heavy jackets drenched in oil-slick leather. Wisps of azure locks and tassels swayed amongst pulsing lights. Heavy embellishments adorned svelte figures as pointed boots stomped the runway. Channeling London’s Teddy Boys through the lens of the French indie nocturnal scene, a display of softened, alternative boyish charm surfaced at Celine.
To inscribe feminine softness upon the male body is a trademark of Slimane’s astounding lexicon of progressive masculinity. This season, his language of evolving the male form is taken to new heights.
It began with the glint of a studded leather collar and a rustle of silk. Bare-chested, lanky, and topped off with unruly lengthy locks, the show kicked off with characteristics all very telling of Slimane’s design ethos. Merging the club kid and the rock star, he dishes out yet another provocative narrative solidifying the fleeting frisson of youth. A jacket glistening with metallic details is a byword for Slimane’s recontextualized notion of masculinity. Expanding outwards from the chest and framing the waist, glints radiate through the darkness cutting away in orthogonal lines.
Voluminously swathing the willowy figure of a male model in look 48, a leopard print faux fur coat luxuriously makes its entrance. Merging formal wear with party wear, Celine’s styling unites the unexpected: a leopard fur coat, a pin-striped blazer, a crystal-embellished shirt, leather pants, and white sneakers. While on paper, their sum may conjure a hodgepodge of clashing elements, Celine’s imaginative styling evoked the hypnotizing aura of a rock star.
White sneakers redolent of Vans, Cuban heeled boots in pink, black, and hyper-studded variations, too, made appearances signifying Celine’s obsession with the alternative edge of the early aughts is far from over. This season, the French fashion house asserts the ultimate accessory is fragrance, as the dark, hedonistic, and sensual fragrance Nightclubbing echoes notions of seduction and mystery as daylight falls and nightlife awakens.
Low-slung skinny leather pants and studs galore flooded the runway with an irresistible neu-glamour; frail yet radiating with vigor, the collection juxtaposes contrasting elements to convey a vivacious, silver-tinged narrative of self-indulgence and the spirit of living in the moment.
The androgyne—a character as prevalent in fashion as the color black—somehow finds itself perennially reborn at Celine under Hedi Slimane’s interminable flair for reconsidering gender. Remixing notions of femininity and masculinity, he bends convention to channel the icy cool thrill of the unexpected. At Slimane’s Celine, man is liberated from the cocoon of stoic masculinity. Something about his touch transforms the world of menswear, imbuing an enduring balance of strength and vulnerability into each garment born from his framework.
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