Celine and Hedi Slimane are parting methods after a fruitful, seven-year collaboration.
Celine mother or father LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton introduced his departure in a quick assertion.
“Under his creative and artistic direction, Celine has experienced exceptional growth and established itself as an iconic French couture house,” it mentioned.
“The holistic vision of Hedi Slimane, his exigence and rigor have made it possible to redefine the codes of Celine whilst reaffirming its feminine and Parisian roots,” it continued. “He has also remarkably enriched new territories for the maison such as the men’s silhouette, couture and haute parfumerie. The extraordinary journey taken together over the last seven years has made Celine a house with a formidable foundation for the future.”
Celine declined additional remark, together with on its succession plan, as did Slimane.
The improvement provides to the local weather of artistic uncertainty and upheaval that hangs over the trade, at the moment grappling with a slowdown in luxurious consumption and shopper warning.
As reported, the employment contracts of John Galliano at Maison Margiela, Jonathan Anderson at Loewe, and Lucie and Luke Meier at Jil Sander are coming to time period earlier than the tip of the 12 months or in early 2025, based on market sources. There are additionally artistic vacancies at Chanel, Dries Van Noten and Jean Paul Gaultier.
WWD broke the information on April 24 that Celine was girding for a attainable Slimane exit and was lining up a possible successor in Polo Ralph Lauren artistic director Michael Rider.
It would mark a return to Celine for Rider, who logged a decade as design director of ready-to-wear from 2008 to 2018, working below then-creative director Phoebe Philo.
It is known Rider has already relocated to Paris, however has saved a low profile. He couldn't instantly be reached for remark.
Slimane’s departure comes solely three days after he unveiled his spring 2025 ladies’s assortment for Celine through a 10-minute movie broadcast on the model’s web site and social channels.
It reaffirmed Slimane’s repute as a formidable clothier, filmmaker and dream weaver, capable of crystalize a method and current idealized imagery that’s compelling and exact.
Courtesy of Celine
His ladies’s assortment movie dropped at vivid life the late French singers and trend icons Juliette Gréco and Françoise Hardy through bushy bangs, heavy eyeliner, babydoll clothes and comely tuxedos.
Meanwhile, his newest cardigan jackets, tweed fits, lengthy necklaces and skirts that cover-the-knee additional fanned a widespread trade conviction that Slimane has the chops, esthetic and the imaginative and prescient to sort out Chanel, which is at the moment trying to find Virginie Viard’s successor.
Chanel executives informed WWD this week it's not but able to reveal its subsequent artistic chief – and that it’s not essentially searching for a big-name designer.
Slimane cemented his repute — and influenced males’s tailoring for greater than a decade — because the designer of Dior Homme between 2000 and 2007. He went on to reinvent and ignite the Kering-owned home of Yves Saint Laurent, which he rechristened Saint Laurent, between 2012 and 2016 — all of the whereas sustaining an in depth rapport with the Arnault household, which controls LVMH and Dior.
His subsequent transfer couldn't instantly be discovered. To make sure, he has a monitor report of revving up a model after which leaving on the top of its success.
Getty Images
In between, he has additionally taken lengthy sabbaticals to pursue his pictures and artwork making.
When Slimane took over the design reins of Celine, with a mandate to develop the heritage model into menswear, couture and perfume, he took a distinct tack from its earlier artistic chief, English designer Phoebe Philo.
“I am enchanted, what a great choice,” Karl Lagerfeld, one among Slimane’s most enthusiastic followers, informed WWD on the time of his appointment. “It will be great.”
Slimane instantly introduced a blast of cool and youth to Celine, signing up Lalisa Manobal from Blackpink and conscripting her to stroll in one among his assortment movies through the coronavirus pandemic.
When she attended Slimane’s spring 2023 males’s present for Celine together with BTS member Kim Tae-hyung, higher often known as V, and his bestie, actor Park Bo-gum, pandemonium ensued.
After just a few esthetic tweaks, and after Slimane unearthed the Triomphe brand, Celine took off like a rocket, synonymous with cool, French-girl fashion with a bourgeois twist.
He meticulously constructed Celine into a whole universe, including stationery, headphones, pet equipment, different way of life merchandise and Celine Beauté, the primary cosmetics line in the home’s historical past. Lipsticks have been added just lately and an eyeliner is out subsequent.
The magnificence line dovetailed from Slimane’s launch of the Celine haute parfumerie assortment, which debuted in 2019.
However, it's understood relations between Slimane and LVMH administration have grown more and more strained.
Still, it appears Slimane labored diligently till the tip of his contract, final week releasing a 445-page hardcover ebook titled “Celine Art Project,” which particulars the 250 site-specific artworks Slimane curated for the model’s flagship boutiques around the globe.
