As to why the Céline audience was seated on revolving turntables, we were left to guess. Phoebe Philo, as her press people had cautioned, wasn’t to be asked any questions backstage. This is a new trend. “Experiential” sets—the atmosphere, the no-expense spared installations—are now à la mode. People who make luxury clothes want to communicate more about themselves and the world, for goodness sake, than the cut, the color, and the fabric! On the other hand, Philo, loath to articulate her work in words since she was a student, was the first person to say: Clothes are clothes, deal with what you see.
The set was no jolly fairground carousel. From the beginning, the sensory experience exerted physical stress. For half an hour before the show, the air was filled with dissonant noise, like that of a church organ stuck on one near-intolerable note. Eventually, the turntables started revolving, and the models came out, in streams, a choreography calculated to create confusion.
Was it an artistic enactment of the acute background awfulness women must try to rise above every day? Or a metaphor for what it’s like to be involved in the relentless, repetitive cycle of the fashion industry? In some ways, as the models paths crisscrossed the set, the impression was that of a busy street. At some points, a screen could be glimpsed at the end of the runway, through which the shadows of the Céline team could be seen frantically putting on the show.
In the ambient chaos, there were, of course, plenty of the clothes the Céline woman has come to rely on to keep her act together in an increasingly difficult corporate world. There were no-nonsense black pantsuits with boxy jackets, buttoned-up collars and stirrup pants, worn with solid Western boots; longer, more waisted versions of the favorite Céline tuxedo coat; striped shirts; and many variations on raincoats. Gone were the neat lady-bags of last season; in their place, capacious black nylon totes, slung on shoulders.
It had a pragmatic air. There were dresses, for sure—slightly experimental bubble dresses; slim long shapes with fringing on integral scarves or on hems. But all in all? The collection had the air of a go-to-work uniform; a wardrobe in which to be prepared to tough out the situation. The alleviating quirk of the season were the giant, fuzzy stoles slung over some of the models’s arms: comfort blankets for the corporate army of Céline women on the long, hard road that may lie ahead?
