Reading Into Celine’s Summer 2024 Film
This morning—after having last showed fall 2023 in L.A. in December—Celine dropped its summer 2024 women's collection video online. The film, which was visualized and directed by the house's creative director Hedi Slimane, was shot inside Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale Richelieu, or BNF. The ornate library is positioned just across the street from Celine's headquarters and is one of the oldest cultural institutions in France—it has housed the French Royal Collection of texts since the Middle Ages.
Despite the backdrop, however, there was nothing bookish or archaic about Slimane's Celine collection. If fall 2023 was about introducing us to more of Slimane's signature indie sleaze characters, this season, aptly titled "Tomboy," is an exploration of their day-to-day worlds: where they're going, where they've been, what they're listening to.
While a newly extended version of LCD Soundsystem's "Too Much Love" played, the models, which included singer Stella Rose and actress Esther-Rose McGregor, stomped through the gilded halls of the library with the kind of unfussy, un-dressy sense of self-assurance that might befit a girl the morning after a night at Les Deux circa 2000. Maybe she's wearing a metallic mini dress and a distressed biker jacket. Or she could be on her way to buy a $30 bag of grapes at Erewhon with her movie star boyfriend, wearing a low-slung jean or a track pant with a shearling ankle boot. Maybe before a flight to New York, she'll accessorize her button-down shirt with a copy of The Stranger by Albert Camus in the crook of her arm.
hot, cool, and smart characters with androgynous bends are what Slimane does best, and this season, once again, he visualized them perfectly for the moment that is now. Baseball hats topped off hot-girl-on-the-go looks like boxer shorts paired with a bra top, or a sophisticated tweed jacket paired with a tank. Those same chic jackets, which could be worn by a woman of any age and any style, also went nicely with the aforementioned low-slung jeans and a cropped logo tee. Slimane's signature sharp tailoring was on display too, of course, sometimes via a longline blazer thrown over a silky, hand-embroidered ivory slip dress or an Oxford shirt with belted black leather pants.
It was rock-n-roll but also raver girl. It had undertones of prep but also of something pretty. Accessories, of course, were as covetable as the clothes themselves. There were front-flap shoulder bags, namely the new Victoire bag with a chain strap, and lug-soled combat boots, but also Slimane's new leather headphones stamped with the Celine Triomphe motif, which mark a new collaboration with audio brand Master & Dynamic.
There's no denying the pull of Slimane's point of view, no matter how he presents it, whether on the runway, in real life, or on film. His vision for getting dressed is about confidence and self-assurance, about wanting to live in the moment while also nodding ever so easily to the pleasures of some past life. His is a unique luxury narrative, and this next chapter he's written for Celine is definitely a page-turner.
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