Prince’s ‘17 days’ is cascading by a stark white tent in central Paris. Visitors on the Celine S/S 2026 present sit like churchgoers on lengthy benches with crossed legs and severe expressions. As 70 appears by new inventive director Michael Rider zoom out and in of our perspective, we’re taken on a hopscotch by music historical past – from Nineteen Eighties pop to gospel-soul traditional ‘Like a Ship…(And not using a Sail)’ by Pastor TL Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir.
Speaker for Celine designed by Matéo Garcia
(Picture credit score: Thi-Léa Le)
Looming at every finish of the catwalk are substantial wooden and steel audio system, including some retro heat to what might in any other case really feel like a void-like area.
‘Music is extremely necessary to Michael Rider. For this present, he had gathered pictures from recording studios within the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, in addition to from theatres and early speaking cinemas of the Nineteen Thirties and Nineteen Forties, the place audio system had been a distinguished function,’ Matéo Garcia, the designer behind the audio system, tells me later. ‘Since these are references I actually have had for a very long time, it felt like the proper collaboration.’
Matéo Garcia: a life in music and creativity
(Picture credit score: Thi-Léa Le)
‘I all the time destroyed my toys as a result of I used to be pissed off with the bounds of the design and wished to place them again collectively in ways in which made extra sense to me’
Matéo Garcia
Rising up in a household of creatives (his grandfather was a up to date of Joan Miró in Spain, his father an ex-punk and summary painter in Paris, and his mom a contact improvisational dancer) Garcia’s house was a spot of paintbrushes, music, and motion. Techno, jungle, reggae and hip hop had been blasted from the audio system in any respect hours of the day, and his father kind of banned pop and different types of industrial music.
‘They had been free-thinkers, all the time questioning the established order, and it affected me. I all the time destroyed my toys as a result of I used to be pissed off with the bounds of the design and wished to place them again collectively in ways in which made extra sense to me,’ he says.
Throughout his teenagers, he ventured out at evening to graffiti round Paris, and in his early twenties, whereas learning drawing after which industrial design at ENSCI-Les Ateliers, he started designing audio system and based the collective Manifart. With plenty of vitality to shake off and uninterested in what they noticed as a stale Parisian nightlife, they wished to shake issues up.
‘The nightlife trade had smoothed out most golf equipment in Paris: you’d discover the identical sorts of bars, the identical drinks, overpriced cloakrooms, and dangerous techno,’ he notes. ‘Museums and official exhibition areas didn’t excite us both. There was no actual freedom or experimentation. We wished to subvert expectations and have artwork and nightlife meet in sudden methods.’
Listening expertise for James Blake
(Picture credit score: Adrien Ozouf)
The collective discovered deserted buildings and squats everywhere in the metropolis, knocked down partitions and made new, inventive entrances, invited artists, architects and designers to exhibit their work, and sprinkled experimental music and techno onto the night. Attempting to unravel the issue of police shutting down the events by reducing the music, Garcia created audio system embedded in concrete partitions or welded metal cages and glued them to the ground.
‘We had been actually a part of a motion of collectives round 2010, with individuals all the time pushing the boundaries, all having totally different approaches, however inspiring one another,’ he remembers. ‘I believe it has led to Paris being very totally different at this time. There’s much more selection.’
Speaker for James Blake by Matéo Garcia
(Picture credit score: Adrien Ozouf)
After commencement, he did a protracted stint as what he describes with a shrug as a ‘conventional designer’, whereas persevering with to maintain a sound system in his workshop and experiment with audio system every so often. Slowly, however steadily, phrase began spreading, and he bought booked to offer sound programs for occasions or create customized audio system for purchasers and types.
‘There’s been an fascinating change on the subject of audio system,’ he says. ‘After we grew up, they had been changing into smaller and smaller, much less and fewer seen. They had been hidden within the partitions and the ceilings, got here largely in black and white, and had been very glossy.’
‘The larger audio system are coming again. And since sound itself is invisible, there’s one thing good about having a visual side to sound’
Matéo Garcia
(Picture credit score: Thi-Léa Le)
Extra not too long ago, although, he’s noticed an enormous shift: ‘For a very long time, there wasn’t a selected place within the house devoted to audio system, however now I believe that’s altering. The larger audio system are coming again. And since sound itself is invisible, there’s one thing good about having a visual side to sound.’
Sound and design collaboration with Celine
A speaker by Matéo Garcia on the Celine runway
(Picture credit score: Thi-Léa Le)
‘The phrase for speaker is similar because the phrase for pregnant in French: there’s a complete world inside it, with many parts coming collectively to create one thing’
Matéo Garcia
His studio solely had three weeks to sketch and produce the audio system for the Celine present. Not desirous to create precise replicas of the audio system in Rider’s reference pictures, they got here up with an array of completely unique designs.
‘We sought to mix sturdy, very early historic references with extra up to date applied sciences,’ he explains. ‘Radical, purposeful kinds, but with a sure softness and delicacy. I like that mixture. It’s additionally fascinating to me that the phrase for speaker is similar because the phrase for pregnant in French. There’s a complete world inside it (a way of containment) with many parts coming collectively to create one thing.’
Element of speaker for Celine
(Picture credit score: Thi-Léa Le)
The seen audio system offered the principle supply of sound, with smaller audio system adorning the lights and the ground. ‘We wished to determine how everybody attending the present might expertise the identical unbelievable sound, irrespective of the place they had been seated. Afterwards, I’ve heard from a number of those that it was the most effective sound they’ve ever skilled at an occasion, which was unimaginable suggestions, in fact.’
Now it’s all programs go on the quite a few tasks they needed to press pause on for Michael Rider and Celine. For the reason that style present, they’ve offered the sound system for a listening session with James Blake organized by the collective Mino at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, on the event of the discharge of Blake’s Attempting Instances album.
‘It was an honour, particularly since he’s recognized to be very exact about his mastering,’ says Garcia. ‘Our objective is to develop programs that stay as devoted as potential to the artist’s unique work. The listening expertise was very emotional.’
Later in 2026, Garcia and his crew will proceed to broaden their vary of high-end audio system, produced in extraordinarily restricted sequence, whereas additionally engaged on a extra intimate and discreet devoted listening area in Paris. With a calendar consistently stuffed from edge to edge, Garcia hopes to carve out time to maintain exploring. ‘We all the time wish to push ourselves and be progressive, however I additionally want time for sculptural experimentation and analysis. That’s a objective going ahead.’
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