A particular characteristic of Hedi Slimane’s is to properly study and research a project before starting work of any kind. That’s been his modus operandi throughout his eclectic career, initially as professional journalist and later as art historian.
The Celine Homme collection presented at the Château de Chambord, one of the finest castles of the Loire Valley and a significant example of French Renaissance architecture, is a narration of chivalry in which the young models (knights if you wish) take on the challenge of explaining this courtly ideal to the new generations, in a changing post-pandemic world.
A style that takes us back in time, to the high to late middle ages somewhere between the 12th and 16th centuries, when courage, honour, chastity and the purest parts of love meant more to a man than life.
Through this fall-winter 2021/22 collection, romantically entitled Teen Knight Poem, Slimane readily manifests this renewal through seductively slim figures in bombers and jerkins with appliques in chain mail hand made in Parisian ateliers.
The tailoring and the Gothic harmoniously blend and merge creating new forms and moods in the leather jackets or big waistcoats with studs, stones or embroideries worn over satin-lapelled jackets and black overcoats. Colours are predominantly black and brown with hints of silver and gold, fitting for the reference period, the courtly ceremonial attire of the 16th century in particular.
Once again Slimane’s Celine can’t be classified into any current fashion or trend if not that of change, using the issues and references experienced by the new generations during the pandemic, to build a collection that gravitates around traditional tailoring, with the rectangle as the founding element of a youthful wardrobe that knows how to handle its plurality of identities.
