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What you need to know about Hedi Slimane, Céline's new creative director

Curiosity, from photography to music, from Saint Laurent to Dior Homme

What you need to know about Hedi Slimane, Céline's new creative director Curiosity, from photography to music, from Saint Laurent to Dior Homme

January 2018: a news that has electrified and stopped for a moment in front of the screen of their computers and cell phones the whole empire of fashion and media. Hedi Slimane is back in fashion, and no, not from Saint Lauren, but nothing less than from Cèline. Appointed as Creative Director of the Maison, Slimane will direct not only the women's and men's collections but also the Couture and the fragrance line.

Now he is ready to write the story once more, to change the cards on the table in his favor, and to make the fashion crowd talk about him once again.

Bèrnard Arnault of the LVMH Group declared:

"Ww know Hedi Slimane well and I'm glad he agreed to go back to fashion with Cèline.
We all remember the great success of Dior Homme in the year 2000 and now we wish him to do even better from Cèline ".

A contrasting character, enigmatic but insanely brilliant.

Here's what you should to know about Hedi Slimane.

#1 Legends

Numerous stories have been built on him, considered genius hovering over a very thin thread, but who, wore rigid long-toed shoes, managed easily to move from one brand to another without even stumbling. From Yves Saint Laurent to Christian Dior, the return to the reins of the first brand in 2012 and the new resignations in 2016.
And now? Céline.
Curious character without any doubt the French designer who, in the past, has caught the attention of the media thanks to the outbursts alternated with "press silence" against all those who criticized his creations. It seems to have made the office doors shrink because they did not tolerate assistants women over size 40 and men over 46. Big and penetrating eyes piercing the screen, lean, very thin.

 

#2 Saint Laurent

He abandoned the Parisian house which he had changed the name - transforming Yves Saint Laurent into Saint Laurent Paris. There have been many questions about it but it seems that at the base of this "adieu", and not the "au revoir", there has simply been a lack of financial agreement.
Please note: thanks to Hedi Slimane, the brand had increased from 353.7 million euros in 2011 to 973.6 million euros in 2015.

 

#3 Music

The obsession of a child who watched enchanted that hypnotic man made up on the cover of Aladdin Sane. The golden dress of a wild Elvis Presley. And then the transfer to Berlin in 2000.
In the air there was the scent of rock, electronic music, a city still to be discovered and which strongly influenced his vision of Dior through a mechanism of "berlinization" of Paris. Afterwards London, the punk of The Rakes, the indie rock of the Klaxons, known, savored and brought directly onto the catwalks of Dior Homme, where the british sound, sometimes melancholic, sometimes strong: the 2005 collections were hypothetical costumes of scene for real bands.

 

#4 The false "goodbye to fashion"

After the stunning farewell from Saint Laurent in March 2016, Hedi Slimane seemed to want to devote himself completely to his other great passion: photography. Ever since he was 11 years old, the future designer made black and white shots and printed them on his own, imagining himself a young reporter from Le Monde. Last year, then, taking refuge in Los Angeles, as he told the New York Times, he began to close in this passion:

"I have not taken fashion photos since I left Saint Laurent in March ... photography has always been there for me".

He seemed to want to leave the fashion system and take care of other things, but it was just time.

 

#5 What did you do during your "break"?

A time spent immersed in black and white, as communicated by his Instagram profile or his photographs taken for a personal archive between California, Paris, Barcelona. So the answer to the question is only one, which however contains within a world, a wealth of passions, inspirations and travel: photography.

all images via Hedi Slimane