On the list of looks you do not expect to see on the catwalk at
Céline, fashion’s Parisian temple to cerebral chic, cute woodland
animals rank pretty high.
A model presents a creation for Céline during Sunday’s catwalk show. Photograph: Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images
But then designer Phoebe Philo’s modus operandi has long been to
throw a curveball, explain it in only the most oblique terms, then sit
back and wait for the rest of the industry to follow. Céline made the
switch to laid-back separates back when everyone else was still doing
those perky dresses that, these days, only daytime TV presenters wear.
It pioneered polonecks a full three years before the trend exploded.
The latest collection was the fluffiest of Philo’s curveballs to
date. At the home of cool minimalism, silk blouses came decorated with
sketched otters and foxes, while ladylike wrap coats were lavished with
wide fur collars. Where her previous collections have dazzled with their
crisply symmetrical lines, this one bewitched with bedroomy fabrics,
with clothes that looked about to burst through too-tight buttons. Coat
dresses in pale quilted eiderdown silk were undone to show a glimpse of
shoulder, dresses in camisole and petticoat shapes were layered and
tangled, like an unmade bed.
Because of Philo’s uncanny knack for sensing twists and turns in the
fashion plot before they happen, the intensely private designer is
besieged backstage after each show by a fashionable mob wanting the
answer to the question of what women should wear next, and why. But
Philo, who was wearing a calf-length black skirt and white plimsolls
with a back-to-front sweater in ribbed chocolate brown wool, open at the
back and loosely fastened with cream cotton apron-style straps, had
more questions than answers.
“It’s about the fine line between sexuality and sensuality,” she
said. “What I am trying to do is to explore that, and I use all this as a
way of finding out about myself. I am interested in glamour, but I have
lots of questions about it: when is it too much, when is it not enough?
When is it girly, when is it womanly? How can it be authentic with the
way we work at Céline?” ‘When is it girly, when is it womanly?’ was one of the questions posed
after the show by Phoebe Philo. Photograph: Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty
Images
These were open-ended questions, she said: hence a collection marked
by its contrasts, in which ladylike coats in ruched cream leather and
trailing scarves of black pom pom fur were mixed with dynamic,
clean-lined jumpsuits and a new hybrid of the rucksack which resembled a
shoulder-holster for a handgun. The animals, said Philo, were about “a
charm, and also a darkness”.
The themes of the show echoed Prada in Milan, which also dabbled in
the dark arts of ladylike dressing. But the codes here were all Céline’s
own, especially a distinctive longline, fluid silhouette.
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