There's a Lovely Little Bit of Old Céline In New CELINE (EXCLUSIVE)
CELINE's Fall/Winter 2026 showroom was unusual. Whereas most fashion houses of similar scale host buyers in spaces that feel like luxury car dealerships, where product is more conversation piece than reason for the season, the LVMH-owned label's seasonal showcase had the whiff of stepping into the closet of an impossibly stylish friend. Clothes took center stage. As they ought to, no?
Michael Rider, new creative director, was as to the point as his creations. "We feel that CELINE is a place to come and get dressed," he said in the show notes. "It’s about clothes that feel necessary, and personal, in beautiful fabrics that last. An attitude, classics with bite, when discretion and restraint make the right kind of noise. Character over costume. Everything you could need. The way we want to feel in clothes."
In this way, his new CELINE hummed with a melody akin to that of Phoebe Philo's Céline, which hits like a real earworm for anyone craving luxury of the purest sort.
Ageless clothes were built into outfits of evergreen cool on wall-mounted hangers — whereas most houses display their new clothes on mannequins and human models, CELINE proposed just the clothes themselves — with peak-lapel blazers and funky ties reflective of Rider's previous tenure as creative director of Ralph Lauren womenswear. But lest anyone think this is merely the designer playing the good-clothes hits, find freshness in CELINE's old favorites made new.
A bomber so pared back that its exterior is rendered white as snowfall. A militaristic parka transformed by shirting fabric into an urbane shacket. Denim jackets shorn of collar or covered sleeve to hem with guitar-pick-shaped applique. Washed and creased jeans embellished with CELINE labels like little souvenirs.
Everything here — the collegiate sweaters! The little leather clochettes! The furry all-swallowing scarf! — was imminently wearable. And quite slick.
Here, Rider makes the Philo factor quite difficult to ignore. It's not fair to pit designers of different eras and tastes against each other, even when discussing a single house. So, let's avoid surface-level comparisons. It's not like Rider's clothes match those designed by Philo, anyways. It's more about the vibe.
True believers say that Philo's core appeal was that, rather than creating pretty things for special occasions, Philo created pretty things for real life. But whereas Philo designed — and still quite successfully designs — with well-heeled women in mind, Rider's CELINE offers a more menswear-inclined vision to all. But both designers have an eye for elegance grounded in great garments: the appeal that made Philo's Céline a critical smash is also obvious in Rider's CELINE.
(And not to neglect Hedi Slimane's CELINE, because his work sparked a straight-up phenom, but Slimane was always thinking of the big picture. The spectacle. For Rider, it's simply about the clothes.)
This is the luxury that everyone wants, that everyone asks for and expects fashion houses to deliver.
For those who demand fashion that recalls Helmut Newton's immortal photograph of model Vibeke Knudsen wearing Yves Saint Laurent's Le Smoking suit, well, look no further.
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