Celine: Hedi Slimane’s Bright Young Men

Late last week, Celine previewed its Spring-Summer 2025 menswear collection, with Hedi Slimane once again opting for a YouTube video rather than an actual catwalk show, and once again soundtracked with a classical score instead of indie rock.

A few months ago, in his video for the current season, Slimane filmed in the Mojave desert and at the legendary Troubadour Club in West Hollywood. This time around, he opted for a castle, and its sprawling grounds, in the English countryside.

Farewell, teenage cowboys dressed in black leather — and hello, upper-class youth in white cricket woollens and rowing blazers.

WHY “BRIGHT YOUNG”?

With “The Bright Young”, Slimane went back to his student days at the Ecole du Louvre, where he once wrote an essay on the origins of Anglomania, the French passion for English style, which dates back to the heydays of Versailles. The designer mixed in a few of his own heroes, like the eccentric English dandy Stephen Tennant (1906-1987), who was related to model Stella Tennant.

In the press notes, Slimane included a quote from author Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies: “You don’t hear much about hope these days, do you?... They’ve forgotten all about hope, there’s only one great evil in the world today. Despair.”

Vile Bodies, Waugh’s second novel — it was published in 1930 — is a parody of the Bright Young Things, a group of Bohemian, often sexually ambiguous young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London, of which Stephen Tennant was a member. Waugh would go on to write Brideshead Revisited, which, decades later, was turned into an acclaimed and influential television series.

The 1981 series inspired the New Romantics movement in British fashion and pop music (including Visage and early Duran Duran) at the time and led to movies including Another Country and Maurice, and ultimately, Saltburn.

“The Bright Young” has elements of all of these. It is probably one of the most homoerotic movies Slimane has made for Celine.

WHAT’S INSIDE THE COLLECTION?

This is a high-end collection, with canvas-made tailoring crafted from 1920s Summer cashmere and wool, rewoven for Celine. Suits are worn with waistcoats in damask, or hand-embroidered in 1920s motifs of English field flowers. Trimmed jackets and rowing blazers are made with cashmere flannel. Some rowing jackets feature embroidered trompe l’oeil couture pieces, handmade in the brand’s ateliers. Some of the pieces come with heraldic-style patches in what the brand describes as “polished silver cannetiles coiling”, a reproduction of embroidery techniques used in the early 20th-century military uniform tradition. The shoes — richelieus, monks and tapered derbies — refer to British dress styles from the same period.

But not all the references are British: according to press notes, Slimane looked at pictures of American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald on a visit to the Hotel Eden Roc in Antibes in 1922 when he designed the white Summer cashmere flannels.

The video was filmed last June, at Holham Hall, in Norfolk. The soundtrack was cut from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes, written in 1736 for a ballet at the Theatre du Palais-Royal. The piece was lost for more than 150 years, and rediscovered in 1957, when it was performed at Versailles in the presence of the Queen of England, on an official visit to France.

YOU CAN SMELL IT, TOO

“The Bright Young” also introduces a new fragrance to Celine’s haute parfumerie collection. A Rebours, with notes of oak moss, cedar, nutmeg, coumarin and cashmeran, shares a title with the 1884 novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans — considered the masterpiece of decadent literature.

WHAT’S NEXT?

So, was this Hedi Slimane’s last collection for Celine? Rumours of the designer leaving the brand have been persistent for almost a year now, with Chanel often being named as a possible next destination. There have been no new announcements so far. Slimane, who was at Saint Laurent, Dior, and back at Saint Laurent before Celine, has always taken his time, including several breaks from fashion design, to focus on his photography. Given his focus on fashion films for Celine, might there be a movie next?

Courtesy: Celine

Text: Jesse Brouns