The Hedi Slimane women in the two houses were quite different to be fair. When you look at his last collections for Saint Laurent and Celine it’s clear that those two didn’t come from the same intent. Although you can still see Hedi’s fondness for animal prints and sequins—lots of them. He’s a much better womenswear designer at Celine even if a bit limited. He does take from houses’ history but filters it in his frankly strict and limited aesthetic.
He’s more guilty of seasonal repetition. Where you can barely tell this show from the last one. But if you look at it in years, there were shifts.
When I look at his last womenswear Celine collection, I think about the visuals he did of Anja Rubik in the Saint Laurent salons or of the introduction of his Couture line at Saint Laurent. His Celine show at the concert whatever is Saint Laurent SS2016. His second Celine collection is similar in spirit to his prefall 2016 collection at Saint Laurent.
Change the shoes and his first Celine collection is his last Saint Laurent collection.
For someone who started womenswear only a decade ago, I think that we have seen everything already.
But, he is very sure of his aesthetic and I can appreciate that.
I would say that I prefer his Celine because overall it feels more grown as a whole. I always feel like he is dressing a groupie and I think that at Celine, more than at YSL, he made more attempts at dressing a woman in charge. I think FW2019, SS2020 and SS2025 are probably his best work.
I appreciate his Celine more because at some point, he went back to the spirit of the house. I don’t care about people going back to the archives, sleeping in them to just rehash old designs in a spirit that doesn’t match the ethos of the brand.
But he has a sensibility that can work in many contexts. It’s about sportswear and Couture everytime and he is a great stylist. And because he is so firm in his vision, we can almost be fooled.
I mean, clearly it’s working. People are willing to see the Armani woman turned into a groupie at the back room of some random rock concert.