“I came about it through wearing it,” said Phoebe Philo. “It’s always that.” She was standing backstage going through the ritual—or is it torture?—of answering press questions. She was wearing a black boiled wool midi dress over a pair of white flared trousers. And that was it, really: the essence of the elongated fit and flare silhouette she showed in many variations for Fall.
Oddly, it didn’t look like Fall, so much, though. There were walkable, practical leather sandals on bare feet, glimpsed through the slits in the kick-flared pants, plenty of sunshiny lemon yellow and sleeveless dresses, too. But do seasons matter these days? As another designer at the helm of a globally distributed brand remarked recently, “It’s always summer somewhere in the world where we’re selling.”
But it seemed as if this collection was looking for what matters in a more fundamental way, too. This was a much more stripped-back, more utilitarian, go-with-the-flow Céline than we’ve been used to seeing. Though there were conceptual shapes—a big black tweed bubble of a top, which at first appeared to have only one armhole, led into a sequence of long shirts and tunics worn over the same shape of loose, very nice pants, with variations on khaki raincoats interspersed within them. The reiteration made it a more relaxed affair to watch—something to absorb at leisure rather than crane anxiously to keep up with. Quite deliberately so, it seems.
“It’s a busy world, and I find I have this idea of stillness with Céline,” Philo said, adding that designing, to her, is “a constant tussle.” Calming down the creative turmoil for a season seemed to give Céline the chance to re-own the template of shirts, well-cut trousers, and smart utility coats which Phoebe Philo established here to such success. Apart from the new bags—and there were many, some with soft, scarf-like knotted straps—it was good enough to allow customers to contemplate the strengths of the house.
