Hedi Slimane’s passion for the dress codes of the Parisian bourgeoisie of the 1970s continued unabated into fall 2020. Shedding a rare chink of light on something personal, the enigmatic creative director dedicated the collection a ma mère in his show notes. What did his mother wear when Slimane was growing up in Paris? Was it something like the idealized Celine collection he sent out this time? That wouldn’t be surprising, because everyone did back then. Slimane was born in 1968, the momentous year of the uprising of French young people against the government, and was too young to have participated, but he would have seen the style of the ’70s through the observant eyes of a young teenager—exactly the age of the boys and girls who roamed his runway this (and indeed every) season.
Slimane used another throwback, late-’60s term for the collection: unisex. What the super-skinny boys with their dandy rock-star coats, suits, black jeans, and black leathers were wearing is available for girls, too. Look closely—it’s always revealing to look at Slimane’s work in its every detail—and it was obvious that they were wearing identical silk and chiffon foulard blouses to the ones that many of the girls had on. The difference between then and now is that both genders can also carry the Sulky handbag, dating from 1966, which Slimane has reintroduced from the Celine archive.
The revival of bourgeois classics that is reverberating through fashion right now was set off by Slimane with his second collection for Celine. Where others subvert and dissect it (like John Galliano) or restyle it (say, Burberry or Victoria Beckham), Slimane continues serving it up straight. Owning it in every line of pleated knee-length silk dress, every culotte, cape, and platform shoe, is Slimane’s thing. Essentially, it’s the look he has assimilated from Yves Saint Laurent as an indivisible part of his own identity. His first job was designing menswear for Saint Laurent while Yves was still alive. Maybe Slimane’s adamant adherence to his canon of design is a subconscious act of torch carrying in his memory.
But repetition and consistency is also part of 21st-century branding—and there’s no one in fashion like Slimane for seeing that through to the nth degree. This season there were glinting, gorgeous highlights: gold-encrusted tunics over pants; velvet maxiskirts embroidered with gold and silver leaves; and a really sensational trio of slim, simple evening dresses. And for boys? Everything to fulfill every fantasy of rock-star glamour—the dream Slimane has been making come true his whole career.
