CELINE IN LOS ANGELES
by Merle Ginsberg
Designer Hedi Slimane’s “hedi” mix of glam rock, grunge and glitter, all run through a French luxury lens studded with icons of L.A., could simply be called “Frunge.”Look, it’s cliché at this point to even discuss how rock n’ roll’s influenced fashion: let us count the ways, right? Items once ascribed purely to rockers, bikers, bad boys, badass babes – items such as motorcycle jackets, biker boots, skintight leather pants, hardware, metal studs. sunglasses at night – they’re all now top of the luxury fashion food chain.But these motifs are not sometime fashion seasonal tropes for Celine Creative Director Hedi Slimane. They’re in his blood. Human amalgams of this look include The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas. Patti Smith. The Cars’ Rick Ocasek. Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall. Lenny Kravitz. French actress/singer Charlotte Gainsbourg. Tilda Swinton. It’s sexy because it’s edgy, androgynous – not because it’s revealing. Because it’s not. It’s often quite covered up.
Slimane’s Celine doesn’t have to be sheer, reveal blow-you-away cleavage, front or back. It’s not so much about showing skin as fabric-as-second-skin. Genderless has always been the name of Slimane’s game. But it’s nothing new for him, nothing trendy. Before Hedi Slimane turned the world on to the skinny suit at Dior Homme (2000 to 2007) (so cool it got co-opted by Cate Blanchett), then turned Saint Laurent womens’ and mens’ collections on their head (2012 to 2018), the young Slimane was the head of menswear at Saint Laurent under the direction of Monsieur Yves St. Laurent himself. At the time, Slimane said of his signature look: “Everything I do is based on seduction.” Tres’ Francais. “But it’s not based on over-the-top embellishment,” one French fashion critic once said of Slimane’s now-timeless style: “Rather, it comes from cut, proportion, silhouette: the same honest principles that have always driven fashion.” Add a bit of mystery and subversion, et voila. At Dior Homme, Slimane dressed no less David Bowie, Brad Pitt, Madonna, Nicole Kidman, plus created stagewear for Daft Punk, The Kills, Mick Jagger, Beck, Phoenix and Jack White.
“It’s French grunge,” one Celine at The Wiltern (which got its own logo) show go-er observed Thursday night – of both the show and the well-cut leather clad crowd that emulated Slimane’s underworld demimonde gender neutrality. “Frunge” may be new fashion buzz word (one this writer just invented), though the concept’s hardly new. Still, this Celine collection for men and women married frunge with elements of other aesthetics, updating it, making it new again, with touches of military style (gold buttons), glam rock (sequin fringe and white oversized chubb faux furs), the L.A. 70’s) oversized fedoras, Annie Hall (floppy ties, vests), Saint Laurent safari (khaki flack jackets), the Chanel ‘80’s (tweed jackets with gold buttons), the Skinny Jean era (jeans tucked tight into knee high boots), classic menswear (slim reefer coats, tweed car coats) – and one of Slimane’s favorite touches: men in two to three inch heels on Chelsea boots. Height-challenged men everywhere owe Hedi Slimane appearing a head or two taller.
French girl style via Slimane means elevating street style via fabrication to make everyday quotidien elements come together in a way that reinvents them – because they’re somehow now intentional, not just tossed together. Did these denizens of the nightlife throw them on from the floor where they’d been shedded a few hours before – or carefully curate them to look like that? Does it matter?
You could say the Wiltern show was one note. I mean that as a high high compliment. I’ve never seen a fashion show in New York or Europe – let alone L.A. – with such singular vision. The 89 looks, culminating in a waterfall cascade of unlined liquid shimmer gowns (pre-raphaelites), HAD male and female models intermingling on stage in front of one giant cascade blast of gold, black and white lights – with one song pounding for 35 minutes: Jack White’s “Hello Operator,” a White Stripes song from 2000, remixed and adapted for specifically for Celine fall/winter 2023 with the help of Hedi Slimane.
Even the way the models stomped – boot clad legs smacking the floor hard to Jack White’s beat – was uniform between male and female models, as well as the pronounced beat of the song. The bands that rocked the Wiltern after show: The Kills, The Strokes, Iggy Pop – weren’t just musical influences, but hair and eyewear influences. Both girls and guys rocked shaggy messy cuts, updated by color and texture from their 70’s origins.
One strange sight on a night filled with eye popping fashion, on stage and off – including one young man in a white tulle gown and silver crown of thorns, and a woman in backless leather chaps – was the iconic Wiltern Theater lobby, with its deco details, filled not just with some of the coolest club kids L.A.’s ever seen– but ice cream carts with frantic servers doling out scoops, baby burgers, cups of curly fries, CC Celine cookies – and of course, one-serve bottles of Moet with straws to folks who look like they haven’t eaten since before the pandemic – it looked like something out of “Day of the Locusts.”
And while L.A.’s fashion crowd won’t come down from this one for a long time – at least till Versace hits the ground on March 10 – observers on their way to the Wilshire and Western Metro stared up at The Wiltern’s marquee quizzically asking each other – “Is that crowd here for Celine Dion?”
