You can get Hedi Slimane to dress celebrities for the Barbie movie premiere but you cannot get the CELINE creative director to dress them in pink. Amidst a sea of Barbie bandwagoners, Slimane is perhaps the only designer willing to hold his own against the trending hue.
Just soak in the CELINE couture dress that Hari Nef wore to the Barbie movie's red, er, pink carpet premiere. It's a great look, no doubt, channeling the elegant, quietly edgy attitude of Slimane's CELINE into a sea of sparkles and daring slit leg.
The funny thing is that though Nef's outfit is classic red carpet classiess, it's also perhaps the only one lacking pink.
Margot Robbie, who wore another ingeniously styled outfit informed by an original Barbie doll, doesn't count 'cuz she was toting a pink hankie (and because she's been wearing nothin' but pink for the past month).
Luxury peers like Versace, Balmain, and Moschino have all gladly leaned in to Barbie bubblegum, so CELINE's Slimane is clearly the odd man out.
No accident there: this is classic Hedi Slimane.
CELINE collections aren't somber but Slimane rarely interrupts his black parade (no MCR reference intended) with a statement pattern or neutral-tined layering piece.
Though he's more than capable of creating colorful clothing — even in pink! — Slimane has a longstanding predilection for darkness.
As a photographer, Slimane exclusively opts for black and white. When he styles celebrities for shoots, be it Bob Dylan or Wiz Khalifa, he dresses them in black.
Even when Slimane's vivacious K-Pop ambassadors steal the scene at CELINE runway shows, they're typically clad in all-black, too. BLACKPINK? More like BLACK, not so much PINK.
But, no complaints here. Hari Nef looks great. I just find it amusing that, while all these other designers dive head-first into a Barbie pink summer, it's business as usual for Hedi Slimane.
I wonder if Slimane is familiar with that one oft-mangled Yohji Yamamoto quote: "Black is modest and arrogant at the same time... But above all black says this: 'I don't bother you — don't bother me!'"
