The rain in Paris on Sunday couldn’t dampen the mood at 16 rue Vivienne, where Michael Rider made his much-anticipated debut as creative director of CELINE. A homecoming of sorts, Rider—who previously worked under Phoebe Philo—returned to the maison with a mission: to honour the House’s storied past while crafting a new lexicon of modern elegance.
“Coming back… in a changed world, has been incredibly emotional for me,” Rider reflected in the show notes. The emotion was palpable. Held in CELINE’s own atelier, steps from the Tuileries Garden, the show attracted a suitably international front row: Naomi Watts, statuesque in tailored wool, and BTS’s Kim Taehyung, recently discharged from South Korean military service, made a discreet arrival, alongside Dan Levy, Kristen Wiig and Ramy Youssef, to name a few.
The clothes? A compelling entry into what’s to come. Rider offered both menswear and womenswear, interwoven with an eye for classic luxury. Gone were the exaggerated silhouettes of recent seasons. In their place, trousers so snug they may as well have been painted on—Rider’s winking nod to his predecessor, Hedi Slimane’s razor-sharp aesthetic. But the story here wasn’t just Slimane redux. There were breezy shirting pieces, heritage wools, and buttery leathers, designed for longevity over flash, and styled playfully with statement accessories.
“CELINE stands for quality, for timelessness and for style, ideals that are difficult to catch, and even harder to hold on to, to define, despite more and more talk about them out there,” Rider wrote, no doubt referencing the unrelenting discourse around ‘stealth wealth’ and micro-trend criticism.
“I’ve always loved the idea of clothing that lives on, that becomes a part of the wearer’s life,” he continued—a sentiment that showed on the runway. In a time when it feels like luxury brands are increasingly leaning into novelty and reporting drops in sales, Rider’s debut was marked by refreshing subtlety and conspicuous quality, all while remaining uncompromising on aesthetic flair. These were garments destined not for Instagram but for real lives, touched by movement and meaning.
CELINE, under Rider, seems poised not to chase fashion’s fickle pace, but to slow it down, breathe it in, and make it matter again. An irreverent return.
This story first appeared on GRAZIA International.
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