Celine: Hedi Slimane revamps Paris nightlife mood

Off-calendar and deliciously retro: with the Celine menswear show held on Friday at erstwhile legendary Parisian nightclub Palace, designer Hedi Slimane staged a 1980s party mood revival.

Sharply cut leather trousers, studded biker jackets, plenty of sequins and modernised mullets: the models, hands in their pockets and wearing sunglasses, sported a nonchalant attitude at the show, held between the two January Parisian fashion weeks - menswear and haute couture - and ahead of the women’s ready-to-wear season in February-March.

Gucci and Saint Laurent, the red-hot, Kering-owned competitors of LVMH’s Celine, returned to the fold and presented their menswear collections during the fashion weeks in Milan and Paris, but Celine’s Hedi Slimane, among the world’s most influential designers, again went for a different format.

After a series of virtual shows staged inside castles, and last year’s show at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, on Friday Slimane took over the Palace, now a Parisian theatre but once a nightclub where the likes of Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent, Prince, Andy Warhol, Serge Gainsbourg and Mick Jagger used to party the night away.

“It is a venue dear to Hedi Slimane, one he has frequented from the age of 16 and which set him off on his fashion career, and also where he celebrated his 50th birthday in July 2018,” said Celine in a press release.

Before taking her front-row seat, Jane Birkin kissed Catherine Deneuve, accompanied by her daughter Chiara Mastroianni. British pop singer and musician Pete Doherty came with his dog.

K-Pop star Lisa of Blackpink and US rocker Jack White got the cameras clicking, as did French actor Romain Duris and his partner, actress Olivia Bonamy.

The show’s soundtrack was played by Suicide, a New York band formed in the 1970s.

Black skinny leather trousers were the centrepiece of the collection, worn with sporty jackets, wide-shouldered formal jackets and tweed or cashmere overcoats. As were suit trousers, slim-cut, but slightly flared.

The handful of women’s looks scattered across the collection are made for clubbing: short, sheer black dresses, and glittering longer ones.

The show ended with an after-party for everyone, in a good-natured atmosphere.