Celine continues to defy convention with surprise Parisian fashion show

Hedi Slimane dropped a surprise fashion show on the Celine website. The brand eschewed Paris Fashion Week instead unveiling its women’s Spring Summer 2024 collection on its own calendar.

Celine stands out among luxury brands as one of the very few, if not the only one, to embrace the digital format that became popular during lockdowns and showing outside of the traditional fashion week season. Slimane personally captured the images and videos of the fashion show, which took place in May at the Bibliothèque Nationale Richelieu in Paris. These visuals were only released online last Friday, and have since clocked 4.6 million views on the brand’s Instagram account and nearly 100,000 on YouTube at the time of writing.

With Mr Slimane there is no offshoot of surprise when it comes to design, but his triumph is consistency, the unequivocal honing of his stylistic vision. If there was any doubt as to his vision, Mr Slimane is credited as stying, casting and directing the set design of the show, which was soundtracked by LCD Soundsystem. As the New York Times noted, "nothing was particularly new, but that's part of the point. It doesn't really matter that Mr. Slimane hasn't shown a women's collection for a year because each new collection simply picks up where the last one left off. It's like a series written through clothes or a reminder that it's not so much our stories that change, but the way they are told and the context."

Celine’s last womenswear show was held in Los Angeles last December. In July the LVMH-owned brand canceled its presentation days before the event due to a controversial police shooting of a 17-year old boy. Mr Slimane said at the time a fashion show would be completely out of place at a time when France is mourning.

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) is located across the street from the Celine ateliers, on rue Vivienne in the 2nd district of the French capital. The BNF is one of the oldest French cultural institutions.