How the Hedi Boys Outgrew Hedi Slimane
Hedi Slimane is nowhere to be found. Since leaving his post at CELINE at the end of last year, Slimane was rumored to be taking jobs at Gucci, Giorgio Armani, and even Chanel, but the famously taciturn designer hasn’t publicly entertained any of it. He has always preferred to let his (very profitable) work do the talking, rarely engaging with the press. From that silence emerges the Hedi Boy.
These dedicated followers of Slimane’s philosophy of dress are rapidly recruiting new members. You might have seen them: They racked up half a million views on TikTok by telling Emma Winder (a London-based content creator and TikTok’s resident Hedi Boy documentarian) what it means to be part of their clan. You might listen to them, if you’re plugged into the electroclash revival. And you might even have succumbed to their ways, causing a 50% increase in searches for “Hedi Slimane” on the fashion resell platform Grailed in the past year.
Their look is instantly recognizable. Karsten Kroening, who posted a 30-minute explainer on Hedi Boys to YouTube in early April, rattled off the necessities: “A lot of black undertones. A leather jacket or a peacoat. A skinny little scarf. For sure skinny jeans, and either combat boots or Eric Payne shoes.”
Payne, maker of the Hedi Boy’s favorite thick-soled sneakers, says he’s heard the moniker floating around. “It’s pretty amazing for a designer to still have an impact when they’re not releasing new collections,” he said of Slimane. “It shows how influential he is.”
Modern Hedi Boys may have invaded social media over the past six months. But in fact, they’re a mutation of a menswear archetype that has survived for more than two decades. Tanner Dean, a self-professed Slimane nerd who worked at CELINE’s Madison Ave flagship store during the designer’s recent reign, identified three separate Hedi Boy waves. “They’re from different eras, and they all dress a little bit differently,” he says.
Each era is associated with its own musical subculture, Dean says. The first generation of Slimane followers was established when the French designer took the helm of Dior Homme more than 20 years ago. Slimane’s slim Dior suits rebelled against the slouchy silhouettes of the Y2K years, almost singlehandedly reshaping the menswear silhouette. (Karl Lagerfeld was such a fan that he wrote a book detailing the diet he followed to fit into Slimane’s spindly suits.) This era of Hedi Boys grew up with bands like The Libertines, The Strokes, Interpol, and LCD Soundsystem, all of whom Slimane eventually dressed and/or photographed.
Dean says the second wave, which he belongs to, emerged during Slimane’s next era, when the designer cut the “Yves” from Yves Saint Laurent in 2012. These Hedi Boys came on board when they saw members of comparatively obscure bands like The Garden, Sunflower Bean, and The Paranoyds walk the runways of a rechristened Saint Laurent Paris.
This newest wave of Slimane devotees is part of the indie sleaze movement embracing the late-aughts Tumblr aesthetic. They came into being a little after Slimane took over CELINE (formerly Céline) in 2018. Although they also listen to Slimane’s playlist of garage and dad rock, they go beyond in a way that recalls Slimane expanding his own taste by commissioning Canadian rapper Tiagz to score his Spring/Summer 2021 collection. Modern Hedi Boys convene around electroclash artists like 2Hollis, The Dare, Suzy Sheer, and The Hellp.
Slimane is best known as a rock ‘n roll guy, but he’s really just tapped into musical subcultures. The Dare DJ’d the afterparty of a CELINE show in 2022, years before the skinny-suited and sunglass-clad musician reached virality through association with Charli XCX. Meanwhile, the duo behind The Hellp were collecting archival Slimane clothes long before they founded the band. As the profiles of these musicians have grown, so have their fanbases, i.e. the people who think it’s cool to dress like them.
In a recent video, Emma Winder interviewed Slimane’s true believers where she knew she could find them: outside a The Hellp concert at south London’s Corsica Studios. She touched on the theory that they all have lice (denied), but she also uncovered more crucial findings. Among the Hedi Boys in line, there was a distinct lack of any clothing made by the designer himself.
It turns out that wearing Slimane-designed clothing isn’t a prerequisite to being a Hedi Boy. Instead, you just need an outfit with a Hedi vibe. “He's the influence behind it, he's the mastermind of the look,” Kroening says. “But it sort of lives beyond him.”
Payne, the sneaker artisan — when I call him at his Los Angeles studio where his shoes are made, clanging machinery is audible in the background — knows the Hedi Boy archetype inside and out. The Hellp have worn his shoes for nearly a decade, and his local LA is where Slimane spent his Saint Laurent days. “He’s one of the most important designers of the last 20 years,” Payne says. “If people want to associate us with that style, I'm not complaining.”
Both Payne and Dean, the former CELINE store employee, theorize that the Hedi Boy look has returned as a knee-jerk rebellion against today’s dominant style. “The monoculture of fashion right now is very Demna,” Dean says. “Everybody's wearing oversized things, baggy pants, and sneakers.”
The anti-sportswear, style-over-comfort nature of Slimane’s work has always felt novel. But his narrow suits and rocker denim feel especially unorthodox against a backdrop of loose-fitting streetwear-leaning semi-luxury. In the early 2000s, people turned to Slimane for an alternative to the oversized norm, and his clothes once again feel countercultural, even if he’s not currently making them. The rise of the Hedi Boys is merely history repeating itself.
