It’s rare that every look in a show is different from each other, yet the whole thing holds together, captivating an audience. Michael Rider did that with his first standalone Celine menswear collection, a fresh-feeling composite of desirable clothes and individual character mixed together like an in-house jam session. “We try it all on, we have to want it, we build on it with each other. It’s a sense that’s collective, that we’re the customer and know what the values of the house are,” he said. “It’s the things we want, and we make the characters we want to be. I think that is unifying, and feels authentic.”
One minute there were the skinniest-cut pants, the next free-flowing drawstring waisted balloons, caught in at the ankle. Neat-to-the-torso tailored overcoats were interspersed with voluminous cape-like trenches.
Perfectly cut blazers co-habited with New Wave-ish cap-sleeve tee shirts. Multiple varieties of sweaters ran to tiny Shetlands, schoolboy Fair Isle tanks and twin-sets and oversize Sloppy Joe tunics.
Every model seemed to be in their own headspace; some with conceptual half-cocked hats, others looking through face-covering fringed headbands. One had gemstones stuck to his forehead. “We were talking about when you’re young: I think a lot of us remember experimenting with our bodies, whether it’s tattoos or your first nose ring,” said Rider. He only has to look out of the window to see this self-expressive free-styling happening amongst kids in Paris. His casting captured that youthful indie self-possession. “I want the guys I see on the street,” said Rider. “I lean my arm out the window to get a photo of the back of their sock or something, and we look for those boys.”
Rider’s new chaos theory of fashion is a conscious departure from the habits of homogeneity and linear storytelling that we’ve somehow been led to expect from shows in the past decade. “Look, it’s not to knock anything else going on, but I think I dream about, and hope to be part of building something that has legs. Something that can turn the page, maybe from a moment some of us felt had gotten flattened, or pre-written, which doesn’t interest me.”
Not that the luxury and quality of Celine is in any way lost in Rider’s melange. He might be after capturing something about a new-generational attitude, but right enough, immaculately cut classic blazers, a fabulous red cropped peacoat, buttery leathers, and slews of bags were also center-front in this new picture. Parts of the past popped up: the blasts of vivid green, sky blue and red, balanced with camel, yellow and barely-there neutrals that some of us remember from Phoebe Philo’s day; the scarf-prints and the lugging along of swathes of fabric. Folding all of this into his new chapter looked and felt completely right. A creative director who’s a designer and a team leader with a vision, Rider now looks completely at home.
