Hedi Slimane - Designer

[Irere]

Nobody's mentioned Joop! yet?

♪ Joop! There it is! Joop! There it is! ♪

 

[Phuel]

Chanel, Chanel, Chanel — you all have such narrow minds. There are so many possibilities. Who says the brand even has to be active? There are lots of fashion houses waiting to be Slimaned!

One of the hottest brands now — Loewe — was seen as hopelessly passé and irrelevant just a decade ago. Less than twenty years ago, Celine was ignored by the fashionable set, and Balenciaga had long been closed. Pierre Cardin was licensed to cheaply made discount store goods, Mugler was reduced to a perfume line, and Courrèges was a footnote in fashion history books. So again, why limit one’s sights to the list of usual big names like Chanel and Dior?

There are many houses and brands that were once major players that are now barely around, just waiting for a renewal:

• Aquascutum
• Byblos
• Cacharel
• Nino Cerruti
• Costume National
• Escada
• Louis Féraud
• Romeo Gigli
• Krizia
• Guy Laroche
• Léonard
• Pringle
• Trussardi

And there are plenty of dead houses to be revived out there. If Schiaparelli can rise like Lazarus, why not one of these?

• Oleg Cassini
• Jacques Fath
• Gianfranco Ferré
• Grès
• Ted Lapidus
• Lucien Lelong
• Claude Montana
• Hanae Mori
• Paul Poiret
• Sonia Rykiel
• Jean-Louis Scherrer
• Torrente
• Vionnet

Never cared for Chanel, but Chanel is incomparable as a label to any other. When all the Houses have fallen— even when the world is burned to the ground, Chanel will remain standing, and making a profit. No exaggeration LOL

Hedi giving new life to Ferre— a personal fav, would be all kinds of wonderful to be Slimaned. But admittedly, Hedi at Chanel— his swan song for Celine may as well be his debut at Chanel, and his finest womenswear offering to boot, would be also all kinds of wonderful. As phenomenally successful and influential as he is for womenswear, his menswear was always superior. And for Chanel to finally have a worthy menswear designer with Hedi, because we’ve already seen his vision of Chanel Men in his Dior Homme A/W 2006 and Celine A/W 2024, is the sort of fashion high and marriage that only comes along once in a fashion lifetime (...but I still wouldn't buy it LOL)

 

[yslforever]

Nobody's mentioned Joop! yet?

Calvin Klein ?
Going from Bruce Weber studs to pubescent twinks.

 

[FashionPower]

Calvin Klein ?
Going from Bruce Weber studs to pubescent twinks.

Calvin got the new girl Veronica Leoni...the image of the brand is tarnished forever after Raf's disastrous tenure, people are gonna think of CK as a tacky underwear brand, so any brand elevation strategy is going to fail miserably

 

[HigthaVandah]

Realistically how long do you think we have before LVMH reformulates the Celine perfumes?

 

[Irere]

Realistically how long do you think we have before LVMH reformulates discontinues the Celine perfumes?

FIFY

 

[HigthaVandah]

FIFY

😒 You're right.

 

[Overindulgence]

I haven't seen any of his immediate Celine team and/or his Celine muses acknowledge this departure on socials. Kind of odd?

 

[Lola701]

Realistically how long do you think we have before LVMH reformulates the Celine perfumes?

They won’t. They didn’t discontinued his fragrances from Dior so no reason to discontinue the Celine fragrances.
But the prices will probably increase.

I don’t know if Rider will be involved in the perfumes. Even if Hedi is the only one credited, I think they should appoint somebody as a head perfumer to deal with it.

 

[style_expert]

They won’t. They didn’t discontinued his fragrances from Dior so no reason to discontinue the Celine fragrances.
But the prices will probably increase.

I don’t know if Rider will be involved in the perfumes. Even if Hedi is the only one credited, I think they should appoint somebody as a head perfumer to deal with it.

Reformulate is not the same as discontinue.
In fact, Dior has severely reformulated the old Dior Collection Privee fragrances which were originally launched under Hedi at DH.
Bois d'Argent was one of my favorites and they still sell it to this day, albeit in a totally watered down, reformulated version which smells hardly as great as the original fragrance.

Having said that, I was never THAT impressed with the Celine fragrances launched under Hedi in the first place. Not bad but not extraordinary either, I think they got a little over-ambitious launching too many at the same time and not focusing on the highest possible quality. For sure it's an easy money maker for them and I wouldn't be surprised see them continued for a long time.
Also, the perfumes are credited to Hedi but were actually created by three different perfumers apparently: Antoine Maisondieu, Olivia Giacobetti and Annick Menardo

 

[HigthaVandah]

In fact, Dior has severely reformulated the old Dior Collection Privee fragrances which were originally launched under Hedi at DH.

I've only gotten interested in fragrance in the last few years. Very curious if you think any of the current versions of the fragrances released under Hedi still resemble the original to any appreciable degree. I've read that even Dior Home Original isn't that close to the actual original version. And if you happen to know whether The Original Trilogy set that they're selling now is the original formulas or reformulations. I swear a few months ago the description on Dior's site actually mentioned that they were originally released under Slimane. Now it just mentions Kurkdjian.

Also, the perfumes are credited to Hedi but were actually created by three different perfumers apparently: Antoine Maisondieu, Olivia Giacobetti and Annick Menardo

Where were the names released? Thanks for mentioning this!

 

[Irere]

Slimane’s original Dior Homme has been totally gutted; the only thing that remains is the bottle. He recreated a version of it in one of the Celine scents — Black Tie, I believe. (Since that was also the name of his iconic Dior Homme sunglasses, that wouldn’t be coincidental.)

Does Celine Haute Parfumerie sell much? I’m sure the cost a lot, those flacons (almost always the most expensive part of a bottle of perfume) look pretty pricy, and it very much has the Slimane style markers all over it — namely, Paris, Paris, Paris and sleazy nightlife (“Nightclubbing,” “Reptile”). If the brand decides to move on at all from bar crawling in the City of Lights, that vision won’t fit.

Black Tie supposedly has been off the market after a VVVVVIP Celine client suffered a serious allergic reaction. If the line doesn’t sell big, it may be easier to let it slip off quietly, then introduce a new one, built to be more profitable from the start (see: Louis Vuitton’s embarrassingly bad tween dream line) in a few years.

I’d be expecting a mass market fragrance launch at some point now that Slimane is gone in an attempt to cash in on Celine’s popularity while it’s still trendy. I’m sure LVMH would love to push out a Celine fragrance in its Sephora boutiques.

 

[Lola701]

Reformulate is not the same as discontinue.
In fact, Dior has severely reformulated the old Dior Collection Privee fragrances which were originally launched under Hedi at DH.
Bois d'Argent was one of my favorites and they still sell it to this day, albeit in a totally watered down, reformulated version which smells hardly as great as the original fragrance.

Having said that, I was never THAT impressed with the Celine fragrances launched under Hedi in the first place. Not bad but not extraordinary either, I think they got a little over-ambitious launching too many at the same time and not focusing on the highest possible quality. For sure it's an easy money maker for them and I wouldn't be surprised see them continued for a long time.
Also, the perfumes are credited to Hedi but were actually created by three different perfumers apparently: Antoine Maisondieu, Olivia Giacobetti and Annick Menardo

Yes but the reformulation is almost a curse now for the fragrance industry. Between the regulations that are changing and the cost of ingredients, brands are playing a dangerous game.

The issue is that even the niche fragrance market is not imune to those changes.

But if I remember well, Dior didn’t owned the formulas of some of their perfumes. Some were done through Givaudan. I think Olivier Polge did Dior Homme when he was at IFF. So Dior didn’t necessarily owned the formula. They got hold of those formulas and full control of the conception of their fragrances when Francois Demachy was hired.

Tbh, I’ve never been such a fan of Dior Parfums because there’s just too much confusion. Too much flankers, so many fragrances discontinued, no real POV at the end.

I have always been more Chanel. Even if there’s reformulations, they rarely discontinue.

But I think Celine Parfums will continue to operate. They went exclusive right away and the collection is quite tight, which is great.

I just hope that they don’t turn Celine into Tom Ford with multiple releases.

 

[HigthaVandah]

Does Celine Haute Parfumerie sell much?

They've sold a few to me! The online frag community seems to like them, but of course who knows how much of that is genuine.

Black Tie supposedly has been off the market after a VVVVVIP Celine client suffered a serious allergic reaction

I bought the sample set that included Black Tie while Black Tie was "discontinued". At the time 100ml and 200ml bottles of Black Tie were discontinued, but it was available in the travel spray size and as part of the mini bottle set. I bought a 100ml when they became available again. This is all referring to the US site, no idea what happened in stores. Comparing my sampler with my 100ml now, I could believe it got slightly reformulated, but not particularly for the worse.

 

[j02215]

Black Tie supposedly has been off the market after a VVVVVIP Celine client suffered a serious allergic reaction.

I keep hearing this rumor, but I just got a new bottle recently directly from Celine, so I don’t think it’s true.

 

[HigthaVandah]

How are they going to market the current perfumes without Hedi's ~olfactory diary~? Hedi absolutely deserves royalties if they're going to use stories from his life to market them, lol

 

[Irere]

How are they going to market the current perfumes without Hedi's ~olfactory diary~? Hedi absolutely deserves royalties if they're going to use stories from his life to market them, lol

The whole “royalties” thing would be the end of these companies. Would Paolo Gucci’s estate get a piece of every GG logo sold? Would Lee McQueen’s family earn a few pennies on every pair of low-riding pants sold around the world? Would every gourmand perfume have to pay royalties to Thierry Mugler for creating Angel? Where would it end?