Hedi Slimane, the high priest of the skinny silhouette, is officially exiting Celine. And his replacement is already suiting up. Several hours after the Slimane news, Celine named the American designer Michael Rider as the French houseâs new artistic director.
Rider was most recently creative director of Polo Ralph Lauren, which he departed in May. His long-rumored appointment is a homecoming of sorts: Rider spent a decade at Celine as a design director of ready-to-wear, working under then-creative head Phoebe Philo from 2008 to 2018.
But the house Rider is joining is much different than when he last set foot into Celineâs Rue Vivienne offices, and not just because Slimane swiftly chopped the l’accent aigu from the logo when he took over nearly seven years ago. Slimane shed Philoâs endearingly quirky image and ushered in his strict, moody vision, launching menswear grounded in lanky tailoring and the most razor-sharp leather jackets and jeans of his career, bourgeois staples infused with a Godard-like cinematic attitude. In short order, Celineâwhere Slimaneâs notoriously demanding nature translated into a radically high level of quality and craftâbecame the place to buy not just any loafer but the perfect loafer, the perfect leather blouson.
Having revolutionizing menâs fashion at Dior Homme in the early-2000s, where his grungy, bony collections both fedâand fed off ofâthe first wave of indie sleaze, the music-obsessed designer used his time at Celine to pursue even more personal creative projects. After several years of obsessive development, he introduced a couture line and perfumes, moves that contributed to the growth of the LVMH label into a $2 billion-dollar-plus megabrand. In recent years, he eschewed runway shows and fashion weeks to instead direct high-budget short films shot around the world and released whenever he saw fit. Though they didnât garner the same buzz as a traditional celeb-packed show, a couple of Slimaneâs collection videos marked watershed moments in the mainstreaming of a distinct TikTok style aesthetic.
âUnder his creative and artistic direction, Celine has experienced exceptional growth and established itself as an iconic French couture house,â Celine said in a statement. âThe extraordinary journey taken together over the last seven years has made Celine a house with a formidable foundation for the future.â
Slimaneâs exit has been rumored for months. In April, the Business of Fashion reported that the designer was in âthornyâ contract negotiations with LVMH, and his name has also been consistently linked to the open creative directorship at Chanel. That same month, WWD reported that the low-profile Rider was waiting in the wings for the Celine job to open.
It is expected that Rider will reinstitute runway shows andâpresumablyâre-establish ties to the fashion media establishment, which Slimane was consistently at odds with. But it is also thought that Riderâs mandate is to build on Slimaneâs trajectory, as Anthony Vacarello did when he succeeded Slimane at Saint Laurent, rather than yank the house in a brand new aesthetic direction. Still, at least one of his LVMH stablemates appears thrilled by the news. Soon after the announcement, Jonathan Anderson posted Riderâs Celine portrait on Instagram with a series of celebratory emojis.
