Most of us are too younger to recollect CELINE’s Michael Kors period, however we got here of age underneath Phoebe Philo’s reign — outdated Céline, if you’ll. And whereas Hedi Slimane’s takeover was met with loads of side-eye, particularly when he swapped out Philo’s Philo’s cerebral magnificence with a sharper, extra rebellious edge, let’s be actual right here: he’s since made us eat our phrases.
Slimane’s razor-sharp imaginative and prescient turned the blueprint for contemporary cool, and his CELINE was all the things we got here to affiliate with the now: easy, aloof, and simply the correct of undone. It didn’t assist when the Hedi-era boy/woman resurfaced from the depths of digital archives because of obsessive self-proclaimed vogue archivists, which made the model really feel sharper than ever. So when Michael Rider — a designer who spent a decade underneath Philo throughout her CELINE years — was named as the home’s subsequent inventive lead, it wasn’t shocking that some critics bristled.
We didn’t. Why wouldn’t a designer raised within the faculty of vogue provocation return to a home hungry for extra? However to know why Rider’s appointment is smart, we have to study what wasn’t working. Slimane’s CELINE was stricken by legitimate issues: that it had a bent in direction of clothes so small it appeared intentionally exclusionary; that it had an aesthetic that felt hostile to our bodies exterior of pattern sizes; that it supplied a imaginative and prescient bordering on sacrilege in an period outlined by democratised vogue discourse and ED TikTok edits. At its worst, Slimane’s CELINE felt prefer it belonged solely to the fashions sporting it — not the tradition consuming it.
Fortunately, we are able to safely say that affiliation is gone now. Rider’s opening assertion with the CELINE Spring 2026 assortment frees the model from that narrative, and perhaps, frees the remainder of us too. Whereas Slimane’s CELINE honed in on one sort of particular person, Rider’s CELINE throws the doorways vast open. It’s saturated with a way of density and fluidity, necessity and improvisation, but additionally experimentation and enjoyable.
Slightly than rejecting the previous, the CELINE Spring 2026 assortment labored to rebalance all points of it. There have been callbacks, in fact, with clear nods to CELINE’s layered historical past. Trousers drawn from Philo’s playbook. Peplumed jackets that felt distinctly Michael Kors-coded. Menswear silhouettes that retained Slimane’s biker-cool aesthetic, although this time with extra respiration room. It felt like all eras of CELINE directly, although the CELINE Spring 2026 assortment additionally leaned into an ‘80s sensibility — barely preppy, but vibrating at the next frequency than what we’ve seen earlier than at different homes.
Scarves — which had been additionally wrapped by Emiko Oguri on the present invitations — was a recurring motif, functioning as a flexible, expressive accent that grounded the gathering in each bodily and emotional fluidity. The baggage made that intention unmistakable too, with the return of Philo’s iconic Phantom and Rider types (some even supplied zippers within the form of a refined but cheeky smile, presents a assured nod to her legacy and cementing future ‘It’ baggage available in the market.
It’s noteworthy that Rider’s debut just isn’t about eradicating what got here earlier than however evolving with readability. By anchoring the present in CELINE’s historic headquarters in Paris and weaving previous design codes into one thing new, Rider alerts that this reset, with the reintroduction of all eras, is inherently deliberate. As Rider himself places it: “Coming again to CELINE, and to Paris, again to 16 rue Vivienne in a modified world, has been extremely emotional for me. And an entire pleasure. CELINE stands for high quality, for timelessness and for fashion, beliefs which are tough to catch, and even more durable to carry on to, to outline, regardless of increasingly more speak about them on the market.”
He added in his letter that “we labored on translating them right into a method of dressing – that angle, or attitudes, that we really feel describe who we’re and what we stand for. I’ve all the time cherished the thought of clothes that lives on, that turns into part of the wearer’s life, which will seize a second in time but additionally speaks to years and years of gestures and events and alter, of the previous, the current andthe future, of recollections, of usefulness and of fantasy, of life actually.”
So in returning to CELINE, Michael Rider hasn’t simply revisited the codes of the home however labored to reawakened the previous souls of the model. His debut was intentionally tender, with none indicators of looking for for a grand spectacle. As an alternative, it does what any well-developed assortment does: it listens, references, and reinterprets with out overthinking issues. It acknowledges the previous with out clinging on to it and appears to the longer term with out abandoning what made CELINE, and even Céline, matter within the first place.
Thus, it’s clear that Rider’s CELINE doesn’t search instant perfection — and it’s not, don’t take it the improper method. There are lots of methods by which the gathering may have completed higher. Although, one factor’s for certain: it seeks the reality. In doing so, it offers the home a renewed sense of objective and a possibility for individuals who had been excluded a brand new purpose to imagine within the model. And CELINE, eventually, feels prefer it has grown into itself in the present day — simply as we have now through the years.
This text was first seen on Men’s Folio Singapore.
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