Hedi Slimane - Designer, Creative Director of Celine

[jeanclaude]

Wow! Black and gold to give a luxury feel! Groundbreaking...

 

[vogue28]

Hedi Slimane currently renegotiating his contract with Celine:

 

[Frederic01]

Why would he want to depart though?

Also, “engaged in thorny contract negotiation”? Apart from a higher salary, what more could he want and need to “negotiate”? Everything is already done 100% on his terms?

Is this about the design studio moving to St Tropez?

 

[Cocteau Stone]

I mean lord forbid a designer like Hedi from negotiating his contract when he's really boosted the profits for Celine to such an exorbitant amount. If I were in his position, I would do the same too without question but really it would come down to general work benefits and having things more in my favour for the sake of ease and comfort whilst improving the quality of the output. Things we all know LVMH can afford, but may scoff at or others may use as a ploy for drumming up drama.

This whole "is he or isn't he out" is just stupid. I may not be the biggest Hedi fan, but it feels like Hedi is an easy scapegoat to drum up drama considering his past with acquittals and reviews. And if he leaves, that's LVMH's loss in the end. They really should be holding tight to their successes, especially when you compare it to what Kering is going through at the moment.

 

[NoInvite]

Not BOF still hanging on to #PhoebePhilo. Leave her alone!

 

[Lola701]

Either BOF journalists are lazy and based an entire article out of speculations made by the MissTweed IG or those articles are conscious leaks made to help Hedi to negotiate the terms of the contract.

I repeat it. If Hedi leaves Celine, he will probably leave fashion all together because nobody in this industry will give him that level of control over a brand.

Arnault mentioned the success of Celine not so long as last week and investments are made in beauty, new launches in fragrances…etc.

Loewe and Celine are the growing brands so the top priority now as Dior and LV will have less spectacular growth.

Celine will survive Hedi ultimately but I don’t believe a departure now.

And seriously, the reasons evoked are ridiculous. When was the last time Hedi worked from Paris? So why now, having a studio in St Tropez would be an issue? Even more that St Tropez is closer to Italian factories than Paris would ever be…

 

[NoInvite]

I hope he stays. All new products introduced under him really has potential. Fragrance and home line looks good and with the launch of beauty it can surely grow and it’s probably what the Arnaults would want.

 

[Kimihiro]

Exactly. What the **** would Hedi and even LVMH want? Arnault got a big brand and Hedi got the most creative freedom backed with financials out of any fashion creative director in history. Not even all namesake founders got as much control as he have at Celine. It’s all an Hedi Slimane brand but name. With the financial backing to realize his world.

I cannot imagine what he would want more. Beauty is set up. Couture? Well. As far as I know he has a separate flou and tailleur atelier now and certainly they could afford a show. Nothing of the constraints at Saint Laurent. Unless he’s moving somewhere or over the whole fashion thing it doesn’t make sense.

 

[Nimsay]

Logically they saw how it got us talking and decided they wanted ad dollars too.

Sidebar: i was at celine palm beach last week when i commented how much they had. I was there yesterday to pick up an order. Anyway the amount of product sold over the weekend cannot be stressed. They sold basically everything desirable and all that is left over are the raffia bags, the 16 in white or black and those towel material bags they made.

The only rtw left are the corny CELINE ringer ts. They had a full bar of 3k jackets that are now gone.

 

[gallianostan]

if he is actually leaving there's no chance in hell that he was fired. LVMH treats their designers very well as long as they're making money and not hurling antisemitic abuse lol. celine is on fire right now. this must be a voluntary decision, with him either leaving fashion altogether or issuing an ultimatum ("give me more money or i'm leaving"), or it's just clickbait sensationalism. i'm betting on the latter rn.

 

[Overindulgence]

Allegedly some of the tension comes from suits and Hedi over him not wanting to do more in-person shows, as well as him being too sporadic for when he wants to show collections among other decision-making related objectives. Tension potentially started when the Celine show last year being cancelled due to the protests in Paris while other LVMH brands got to host their couture shows the same week. LVMH was pushing for a more consistent calendar and in-person shows, Hedi and the Celine team planned the summer show only for it to get cancelled a few days before, and since then, Hedi has had some ill feelings towards the suits.

 

[LadyJunon]

The full article is pretty much a rewording of Miss Tweed's article:

Can Celine Work Without Hedi Slimane?
After growing the brand’s annual sales to nearly €2.5 billion, the star designer has been locked in a thorny contract negotiation with owner LVMH that could lead to his exit, sources say. BoF breaks down what Slimane brought to Celine and what his departure could mean.

By ROBERT WILLIAMS
23 April 2024

BoF PROFESSIONAL
PARIS — For months, Celine designer Hedi Slimane has been engaged in a thorny contract negotiation with owner LVMH that could lead to the designer’s departure from the brand, sources familiar with the matter say.

Since LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault installed Slimane six years ago, the star designer has transformed Celine, launching menswear (leaning into his trademark skinny silhouette), perfume and, most recently, beauty, in addition to reconnecting its womenswear image to the house’s historic identity as a purveyor of leather goods that incarnate Parisian bourgeois style.

At first, sales dropped as Slimane pivoted sharply away from predecessor Phoebe Philo’s minimalist, arty look. But since the pandemic, Celine’s business has surged to record highs. While owner LVMH does not regularly disclose sales for individual brands, Celine’s revenues surpassed €2 billion ($2.1 billion) in 2023, the company told investors in January. The brand’s full-year results were likely closer to €2.5 billion, meaning it had surpassed Fendi to become LVMH’s third-largest fashion label, behind only Louis Vuitton and Dior, according to HSBC.

Despite the strong results, sources say Slimane may be on the way out, adding credence to a recent report by Miss Tweed saying Slimane is set to leave the brand. Representatives for LVMH and Celine declined to comment.

The Two Sides of Hedi Slimane
Slimane is a rare talent. Known as the industry’s best stylist, he has generated perfectly precise fashion images since his trendsetting turn at Dior Homme in the early 2000s, when he helped usher in a decade-long trend cycle with his skinny silhouette. His approach to branding and merchandising invokes the strategies of French fashion heavyweights, with ultra-consistent, minimalist art direction that echoes Karl Lagerfeld — especially when shooting Celine’s black-and-white campaigns himself — and commercial collections that blend street style and luxury à la Yves Saint Laurent.

“Hedi is a genius of marketing, product and merchandising. He knows how to create that jacket, that shoe,” said Alice Bouleau, partner at executive search firm Sterling International. “It’s not overly intellectual; it’s not as subtle as what Phoebe was doing, but he really grasped the essence of what this brand was about.”

But Slimane’s considerable talent has come with financial and creative demands to match.

In addition to commanding what’s understood to be a historically high salary for a designer, he’s also notorious for seeking royalties on all manner of creative output from campaign images to perfume formulas and more.

A true auteur despite his commercial savvy, Slimane expects complete creative control over a broad sweep of subjects — not just what goes in collections, but when and how they are shown, as well as to whom, and the environment in which they are sold.

That can lead to big results and fast, but only when the investment dollars are flowing freely. Since Slimane joined Celine, teams have spent countless hours, and company funds, ferrying samples back and forth to his home in St. Tropez, where he regularly holes up. Projects often reach an advanced stage before getting axed by the reclusive Slimane, creating frustration and high turnover in senior teams.

Shows and media can also be a sticking point. The brand has largely eschewed in-person runway shows in favour of fashion films that take months and millions of dollars to shoot. These are then released online without warning, limiting opportunities for editorial coverage (and, ultimately, visibility with consumers). When Slimane does stage an in-person show, influential guests are often absent. In addition to favouring off-calendar presentations at moments when editors and influencers are not around, since 2021 the brand has outright boycotted Vogue and its sister publications at Condé Nast in protest of the company’s cost-cutting move to oust regional editors-in-chief, including his longtime friend and collaborator Emmanuelle Alt, formerly editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris.

Slowing Market
As luxury’s demand cools following a multi-year surge, it may be difficult for LVMH to justify the investment Slimane requires at one of its smaller brands. LVMH’s fashion and leather goods growth slowed to 2 percent in the first quarter, its slowest quarter since 2020.

“There’s a normalisation of growth right now that has led LVMH to become more cost-conscious. It could be more difficult to justify having a small brand where [the designer] is getting whatever they want; it can create tensions,” HSBC analyst Aurélie Husson-Dumoutier said.

The idiosyncratic creative rhythm at Celine won’t make it easy for teams to navigate a rocky luxury market. The brand’s latest collection, inspired by Paris in the 1960s and the Arc de Triomphe, was dropped in a fashion film in mid-March. The slick collection of baby-doll dresses and riding hats made for an eye-catching departure from Slimane’s usual fare at Celine, which leans more often into denim- and shearling-heavy references from the 1970s. But it’s unclear whether clients will take notice. Nearly 150,000 people have streamed the video on YouTube, far fewer than for the show footage of similar-sized brands that staged physical activations during fashion week. (Loewe logged 375,000 views; Saint Laurent more than one million.) The brand hasn’t staged a physical event since January last year.

Slimane may have his own motivations for parting ways with Celine: He could have another, bigger job lined up — inside or outside LVMH — or he could simply want to do other things with his life. Following his tenure at Saint Laurent, Slimane took owner Kering to court to prevent the group from scrapping his lengthy non-compete, allowing him to bring in a multi-million dollar salary while not working in fashion for three years. The designer lived primarily in Malibu and focused on his photography practice.

Celine After Hedi
A unique talent Slimane may be, but Kering’s Saint Laurent offers a case study in how a brand can continue to thrive in his wake. Following the designer’s 2016 departure, the brand gradually updated its womenswear collections and products under his successor, Anthony Vaccarello. But much of the framework that Slimane put in place, including pared-back branding, a monochromatic store concept and a skinny, rocker silhouette for men, remained in place as sales roughly doubled to €2 billion in the three years following his exit.

LVMH could take a similar tack at Celine should Slimane leave the brand. The template he has put in place at the label is commercially potent and broadly relatable, yet still differentiated: with an accessories program that has conquered Millennial bourgeoises far beyond Paris. The look is more grown-up than rival Saint Laurent, and more urban than Chloé's. While plenty of contemporary brands specialise in Parisienne wardrobe dressing, Celine is the only one to do so convincingly in the luxury space, and to style its wares with such a high-fashion touch.

LVMH could certainly slot in a new designer to add a dose of innovation and accelerate the pace of communications while sticking to its core branding and commercial strategy. Plenty of buyers of Celine’s Triomphe bags and monogrammed canvas cardholders are unlikely to know who Slimane is, after all, even if they appreciate the brand he’s effectively made his own.

“Hedi has set such a clear formula that someone else could continue to build on it, even someone who’s not as much of a star designer,” headhunter Bouleau said. A bolder approach to succession could also pay off, “but would be a big risk.”

“LVMH tends to put less emphasis on the designer — it’s always the brand that comes first,” HSBC’s Dumoutier said. “What Hedi has put in place can survive him.”

On the other hand, much of Slimane’s magic is in the execution. Updating and reissuing vintage pieces from lines like YSL Rive Gauche and its contemporaries is Slimane’s modus operandi — but they are styled and shot with a luxurious sheen. Losing Slimane the designer also means losing Slimane, the stylist and photographer. Those are enormous shoes to fill.

Luxury Turf War
Whether Hedi ultimately moves on or stays, it won’t have been an easy negotiation for LVMH and its chairman Bernard Arnault, who is seeking to balance a long-term vision for elevating his brands with cost-cutting efforts to protect the company’s bottom line in a slowing market.

After decades of snapping up luxury houses and real estate to expand his edge on competitors, 75-year-old Arnault and his children have become increasingly focused on retaining their access to creative talent, as well. Where star designers used to cycle in and out of LVMH and rival groups, in recent years the company has increasingly sought to move designers around within its ranks (as in the case of Kim Jones, who led Louis Vuitton menswear before taking on Dior Homme, then eventually adding Fendi womenswear to his duties).

LVMH may feel even more pressure to keep Slimane after talks with another rare talent — Alessandro Michele — fell apart, according to sources, leading the former Gucci designer to take up a role at Mayhoola’s Valentino. Meanwhile, LVMH’s Givenchy label has yet to name a designer since parting ways with creative director Matthew Williams in January.

Source: BoF

 

[PDFSD]

Either BOF journalists are lazy and based an entire article out of speculations made by the MissTweed IG or those articles are conscious leaks made to help Hedi to negotiate the terms of the contract.

I repeat it. If Hedi leaves Celine, he will probably leave fashion all together because nobody in this industry will give him that level of control over a brand.

Arnault mentioned the success of Celine not so long as last week and investments are made in beauty, new launches in fragrances…etc.

Loewe and Celine are the growing brands so the top priority now as Dior and LV will have less spectacular growth.

Celine will survive Hedi ultimately but I don’t believe a departure now.

And seriously, the reasons evoked are ridiculous. When was the last time Hedi worked from Paris? So why now, having a studio in St Tropez would be an issue? Even more that St Tropez is closer to Italian factories than Paris would ever be…

BOF is not that desperate to follow Miss Tweed, come on you think LVMH has zero input on what agenda BOF pushes, nothing more than getting ahead of the news than BOF completely ignoring it, LVMH might have asked BOF to delay this article at the very least.

I do think other brands will try to have Hedi,if they come to a agreement is another thing.

If LVMH and Hedi don't come to mutual agreements that works for both sides, he will leave it all behind regardless what projects are up coming or the success it generated so far.
He left Saint Laurent also just after he open the new HQ and started the couture part with the white YVES SAINT LAURENT label etc it was also not completed his project in a way.

Basically what i want to say is you can't plan disagreements that happen between you and your employer, some or most of the time its many little drops that make the bucket overflow at a certain point this moments can be like now upcoming contract negotiations etc

A studio in St Tropez thing started during the pandemic, i don't understand this part as i know people still work from Paris style office as well currently as they await for him to arrive they don't move a pin or sketch without his input.
I need to ask what percentage is in St Tropez if this is the case still, ( also as highlighted by miss tweed article is was the disruption of design office team members lives to have to move their during the pandemic that caused stress.... not everyone want to live there, to be fair people in design offices also have families and a private life & quality of life in a city they chose to be in and not enforced by a company )

 

[Nimsay]

So LVMH wants him to return to office while he is just fine working remote. Many such issues.
LVMH should shut the f*ck up and buy Hedi a helicopter so he can transit quicker.

 

[yslforever]

So LVMH wants him to return to office while he is just fine working remote. Many such issues.
LVMH should shut the f*ck up and buy Hedi a helicopter so he can transit quicker.

The studio is still in St-Tropez or Ramatuelle ?
They are very small villages, honestly a bit remote by road, dead in winter and insufferable in summer.

 

[NYLA22]

Does Hedi hate Paris or something? I know he was obsessed with L.A. for awhile and had his YSL studio there, and now he works out of St. Tropez? I didn't realize that.

 

[fenty]

I hope he's just asking for more zeros, I'm not a big fan of his Celine but I can't deny how successful the brand has become under his vision.

 

[LadyJunon]

The only good outcome would be for the Arnault to suck it up and bend over. Replacing him really won't be easy, especially at Celine which doesn't have very strong design codes. That said, Celine needs to return to physical shows. Lots of the mainstream recognition a fashion show gets comes from those who follow the celebrities attending. Fans are going to get fustrated if they can't burn their retinas looking for the K-pop biases in the audiences.

While four shows at Paris would be the most conventional strategy, they could pull a page out of Jacquemus' book and opt for a mix of Paris and destination shows. For example, their next 18 or so months could be like this:
- AW24 Menswear through a film to get it out of the way
- SS25 Menswear on-schedule in Paris to regarner hype
- SS25 Womenswear in St-Tropez
- AW25 Menswear in London
- AW25 Womenswear in Paris again
- SS26 Menswear in Monaco
- SS26 Womenswear in Venice

They could rework their campaign strategy to highlight specific products and lines on top of their main collections. For example, they could do two larger campaigns for the Summer and Winter collections, with smaller campaigns for the "Grands Classiques", "Triomphe" and "16" lines in between. Their "Haute Parfumerie" and "Beaute" lines could be promoted via ads starring Danielle or Lisa. The next step could be the launch of a cologne or a skincare line with "V" as the face.

 

[yslforever]

The only good outcome would be for the Arnault to suck it up and bend over. Replacing him really won't be easy, especially at Celine which doesn't have very strong design codes.

Celine needs to return to physical shows. Lots of the mainstream recognition a fashion show gets comes from those who follow the celebrities who attend. While four shows at Paris would be the most conventional strategy, they could pull a page out of Jacquemus' book and opt for a mix of Paris and destination shows. For example, their next 18 or so months could be like this:
- AW24 Menswear through a film to get it out of the way
- SS25 Menswear on-schedule in Paris to regarner hype
- SS25 Womenswear in St-Tropez
- AW25 Menswear in London
- AW25 Womenswear in Paris again
- SS26 Menswear in Monaco
- SS26 Womenswear in Venice

They could rework their campaign strategy to highlight specific products and lines on top of their main collections. For example, they could do two larger campaigns for the Summer and Winter collections, with smaller campaigns for the "Grands Classiques", "Triomphe" and "16" lines in between. Their "Haute Parfumerie" and "Beaute" lines could be promoted via film starring Danielle or Lisa. The next step could be the launch of a cologne or a skincare line with "V" as the face.

I suspect Hedi doesn't want physical shows in Paris because he doesn't want to be part of a fashion week, meaning: stuck in a calendar among the competition, vulnerable to comparison, and just in front of the press or critics .
He must either think he's better than that, or on the contrary, feels extremely insecure.

 

[Nimsay]

Idk if hedi hates paris. Its likely hedi wants to avoid the turnoil there. Not unlike me hanging out in florida until NYC gets its act together.


Karl did this when he lived in Monaco for a decade because he wanted to avoid Parisian political turmoil.