Hedi Slimane heads to Saint-Tropez for indie-inspired Celine collection

The Edenic shorelines of the south of France provide the backdrop for the latest collection from Hedi Slimane at Celine, a transporting S/S 2023 offering that mines the innate glamour and Riviera stylings of Saint-Tropez for inspiration – long a playground for bohémiens and celebrities alike. 

Revealed today in a short film by Slimane, it marks the third city on the French Riviera to backdrop the designer’s spring/summer collections at Celine, with previous films having been captured in Monaco and Nice (the accompanying notes call it ‘Hedi Slimane’s French Riviera cycle’). In fact, the coastal locale has become home for Slimane, who moved to Ramatuelle – a small village on the Saint-Tropez peninsula – in 2018, relocating from California. 

Celine by Hedi Slimane S/S 2023

His beach house – titled ‘Villa Kerouac’ – provides the setting for a series of black and white vignettes captured by Slimane in the S/S 2023 film, featuring American model Lulu Tenney against the coastal backdrop (others see her traversing the shoreline on a yacht, or balancing on a rock at sea). The villa is of particular importance to Slimane’s tenure at the Parisian house, providing the inspiration for the interior design of Celine’s boutiques across the world.

These vignettes are interspersed with the presentation of the collection in Saint-Tropez itself, taking over the town’s harbour-side walkway as a runway (various fluttering white flags featuring the house’s double-C Triomphe monogram line the route). ‘For the past five years, the couturier has explored Saint-Tropez and a more general nostalgia for the French Riviera as a counterpoint to the Saint-Germain-des-Près codes of Celine,’ the house says in an accompanying statement.

The collection itself, titled ‘La Collection de Saint-Tropez’, imagines an ‘indie summer’, providing a ‘renaissance of Hedi Slimane’s 2000 era’. As such, alongside inspirations synonymous with the French Riviera – Breton-style sweaters, sailor’s hats, denim shorts, navy blazers with golden buttons – there is a distinct influence of the ‘indie’ era which Slimane helped to define during his tenure at Dior Homme. Here, the undone decadence of the era is channelled in slouchy leather waistcoats, boyfriend-style oversized shirts, and abbreviated sequinned dresses, alongside the requisite dark sunglasses and drainpipe jeans.

‘The Saint-Tropez collection marks the return of the Original Skinny Jean which Slimane created and launched in the 2000s,’ say the house. ‘This silhouette was adopted by both the British and American rock scenes between 2000-2007 and soon spread around the world. [Here] they are low-rise in Japanese blue or black denim... and can be work with Celine ballerina flats, Mary Janes, or Babies, the new Celine biker boots.’

In keeping with these inspiration points, the soundtrack is provided by The Libertines, the band that perhaps best epitomised the early 2000s Indie movement through frontmen Carl Barât and Pete Doherty (the band’s cult album ‘Music When the Lights Go Out’ was released in 2004). ‘Friends and accomplices [of Slimane] for the past 20 years’, as Celine describe, the pair are also photographed by the creative director in his unique black and white style.

celine.com