"This Woman's Work" by Kate Bush opened the Céline show this afternoon. "She's with me today, I hope," said Phoebe Philo, wearing a T-shirt from Bush's recent 22-night session in London. "I was incredibly inspired by that song. I couldn't believe how vulnerable it was. And being vulnerable is an incredibly important part of being creative."
Vulnerability for Philo this season meant embracing uncertainty. "In a way, I was open to everything—no preconceived ideas, very little of me saying no." The collection was almost a stream of consciousness, a random portmanteau of moods and emotions from the very first outfit: a utilitarian top paired with a fitted knit skirt, provocatively slit front and back, that dissolved into a mass of fringing. Work and play in one artful package. It set the tone for what followed.
It was fascinating to watch the way in which shapes as practical as a coat, a tunic, or a shift were unhinged by lacquered inserts, cutouts, streamers of fabric. The shoes were flat, elasticized, functional. If the topstitching also emphasized utility, the belts of string weighted with a metal something that could be either a padlock or a bell pointed toward mystery. Like the ceramic hand that clutched a throat, or the ceramic pair of lips that dangled in pendant form.
The floral prints were new—a bourgeois insertion into Céline's implacable cool. A risk, perhaps. But, as Philo pointed out, edit certainty from the equation and the connection between creativity and risk becomes even more graphic. That connection—raw, dynamic—is the same extraordinary one Philo has made with women all over the world. What is a woman's work? "Being a mother, a sister, a friend, a fashion designer," she said. "A huge amount of different things, all of them fulfilling, all of them equally important."
