After 25 years as a fashion designer, Hedi Slimane has built up a rich discography of menswear: a back catalogue that continues to influence progressive masculine dressing today. Ever since Pierre Bergé named him as creative director of menswear at Rive Gauche Homme at Yves Saint Laurent (as it was then known) back in 1997, Slimane has used fashion as a device to create a specifically distinct form of masculine portraiture. What makes it so distinct is a combination of his chosen conceptual lens, music, plus the filter of androgyny that inflected his street photography many years before his fashion career began. His fashion dialect crystalized when, during his time at Dior Homme in the early 2000s, he had moved from Paris to Berlin and begun observing the subcultures that so compel him there. He later moved to London during Camden’s second wave of peak indie rumpus, which further inflected that Dior period.
By the time Slimane returned to Saint Laurent (as it would then be known) between 2012 and 2016 he had followed his reportorial urge to Los Angeles. Shortly before exiting the house for a second time in 2016 he said to L’Uomo Vogue of his work: “You keep doing what you always did with authenticity, determination, and dedication regardless of forgery and imitation. Those things always end up getting sorted out, one way or another. You own it, it’s your trademark, there is, besides a record for it.”
Last night in Paris Slimane extended that record with his latest collection for Celine, the house he joined in 2018. The show was held at the Palais de Tokyo, more recently a venue inextricably associated with Rick Owens, but also one previously explored in fashion by Slimane. In January 2002 he presented the Dior Homme (as it was then known) fall 2002 ‘Reflexion’ show here. Back then Slimane’s specially commissioned soundtrack was by the French electronica outfit Ready Made FC, while this season it was New York’s new-new wave band Gustaf.
Back in 2002, Bernard Arnault, Bergé, and Karl Lagerfeld were on Slimane’s front row. Last night, sadly, only Arnault—who according to those sitting near him took photos of almost every look—was present to see Slimane’s return to the venue. Also in attendance were Lisa from Blackpink and V from BTS, whose fans followed them in droves. The collection they saw encapsulated Slimane’s ongoing exploration of the new wave, with the sub-genres he nodded to spanning all three city-defined stages of lifetime world tour. In 2002 Slimane observed: “I’m always thinking that something will come along to destroy whatever credo I have.” Two decades later, he continues to keep the faith.
