Amid rumors that his days at Celine may be numbered, the house’s creative director Hedi Slimane headed to the Mojave Desert in the video show of the Winter 2024 collection.
Staged to music by Hector Berlioz, the video was released while Paris has been flooded with speculation that Slimane may be about to exit Celine after six years at the house.
Dramatically, the action opens with three choppers bearing the name Celine swoop – Tom Gun style – over a highway in a giant expanse of desert dropping a large jukebox from which blasts the soundtrack.
It turns out to be Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique, composed nearly two centuries ago by the French composer. Created when Berlioz was just 26, Slimane discovered the work at the age of just 11, becoming a life-long fan of the Romantic composer and conductor. A coin dropped into the jukebox ignites the action.
Suitably evocative, the cast appear in five jet black Cadillacs – coupes, convertibles and limousines – in a video which was shot in January and February of this year in the Californian desert. A no expense spared video for sure.
Hedi entitled the collection California Team Cowboy, with the opening hirsute hombre in a black Stetson and peak collar suit. Who exits his Cadillac to take his place at the center of the two-lane blacktop.
Slimane riffs on his classics with a gunfighter twist –Doc Halliday redingotes; pencil and lace ties; Beatles style collarless jackets; elongated rustler boots. His tailoring, as ever, is impeccable from the assassin’s black suit worn by a dude with a Jimi Hendrix afro to the preacher’s Sunday best pinstripe suit with crew neck.
A mustachioed tender foot ranch-hand rides around the range on a quarter horse with Western shirt, boots and chaps – twirling a lasso as he goes.
“Those sounds you’re hearing (are) from the first psychedelic symphony in history, the first musical description ever made of a trip, written one hundred thirty odd years before the Beatles,” argues Slimane in the accompanying press release.
Who kept his credits to a minimum, in Hedi’s favored micro script: makeup by Aaron de Mey, hair stylist Esther Langham and hair colorist Alex Brownsel.
For evening, Slimane gets slick with sequined Edwardian coats, sleek cashmere evening coats and glistering golden frock-coats – with the models moving to a military base style concrete structure or a concrete spaghetti junction. Before the show builds to a climax in a valley of thousands of windmills, taking the western and Berlioz into the 21st century.
Ending with one model standing amid soaring canyons, before the juke-box suddenly goes up in flames, as the symphony – from a recording by Leonard Bernstein in New York in 1963 – ends.
A timely reminder that even if Slimane has a well-earned reputation of being “très, très compliqué,” he is still the most influential menswear designer of the 21st century. Not bad going.
Paris has been rife with rumors that Slimane may be about to exit the house of Celine. Well, if this is his final hurrah, this vision of retro Anglomania chic on the move in the driest desert in North America felt very well chosen.
The Mojave is also the site of Death Valley.
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