A phalanx of Celine-branded helicopters and a motorcade of black Cadillacs; hovering pictures of the undulating mountain ranges of the Mojave Desert; cowboys on braying horses; miles-long stretches of Californian open street – together with his newest Celine menswear assortment, introduced in a brief movie launched at this time, Hedi Slimane embraces the cinematic for a Hollywood epic within the designer’s singular fashion.
It begins with a jukebox – delivered by helicopter and replete with the identical Celine branding – which when flipped on performs not one among Slimane’s traditional rock and roll muses (latest assortment movies and reveals from the designer have featured soundtracks from LCD Soundsystem, The Libertines and Alan Vega), however Hector Berlioz’s 1830-composed ‘Symphonie Fantastique’.
Celine Winter 2024 menswear: ‘Symphonie Fantastique’
(Picture credit score: Pictures © Hedi Slimane, courtesy of Celine)
Purportedly impressed by an obsessive, consuming relationship between the French musician and English actress Harriet Smithson, the dream-like epic is a feverish hallucination – one among opium poisoning, satanic witches and homicide – which in 1969 was declared by Leonard Bernstein as ’the primary psychedelic symphony’, created over a century earlier than the beginning of the acid-fuelled Nineteen Sixties motion.
‘Now I’m certain that any of you who has ever had a crush on somebody who did not return your feeling will perceive that passionate melody completely,’ stated Bernstein, who not too long ago was the topic of Academy Award-nominated movie Maestro, starring Bradley Cooper within the titular function. ‘You possibly can simply see how a lovesick musician might grow to be obsessed by it. And in the event you perceive that, you are prepared to listen to the symphony.’ Slimane found the work at age 11, and have become immediately ’passionate’ about Berlioz, the home describes.
It supplies a suitably dramatic backdrop for a set that mines Slimane’s most enduring signatures: the slim riff on the tuxedo, shrunken leather-based jackets and trousers, and thrives of rock-and-roll showmanship, from pussy-bow neckties to materials that glimmer throughout their floor. An evolution comes within the play on proportion that runs by means of the tailoring: blazers are elongated or nipped within the physique, or shortened within the lapel, recalling Nineteen Sixties silhouettes (different jackets see the lapel accomplished away with totally, in what the home describes as a ‘frock coat’). Bernstein, in the meantime, appears to hover over the gathering in roll-neck sweaters and billowing capes, that are instilled with the drama of the live performance corridor.
Elsewhere, a collection of items from the home’s couture arm seize Slimane’s ongoing fascination with Parisian savoir-faire – whether or not crystal-adorned overcoats which refract the Mojave Desert’s gentle, or tailoring embellished with hundreds of sequins. Every is proven on Slimane’s make-shift catwalks: an enormous stretch of open street which runs by means of the desert like an airport runway.
(Picture credit score: Pictures © Hedi Slimane, courtesy of Celine)
California, and Los Angeles – the latter proven in glimpses of its downtown skyline on the finish of the movie – has lengthy been one thing of a second house for Slimane, who lived within the metropolis earlier than relocating to the south of France originally of his tenure at Celine. His fascination with the town’s heady mix of rock and roll subculture and nostalgic, Hollywood glamour has lengthy pervaded his collections at Celine and at Saint Laurent and Dior Homme prior. In December of 2022, he hosted his Winter 2023 assortment with a high-wattage present The Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, a historic film palace-turned-music venue which has hosted the likes of Prince, Iggy Pop and Sonic Youth.
Uncover Celine’s Winter 2024 womenswear assortment, which was introduced this previous March in a Hedi Slimane-directed movie, right here.
celine.com
(Picture credit score: Pictures © Hedi Slimane, courtesy of Celine)
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