Philophiles versus Slimaniacs in fashion’s new civil war

If Hedi Slimane had crushed a kitten under the
heel of one of his studded boots he might have provoked less indignation
than
his debut show for Celine.
The howl that went up after the hottest show of Paris fashion week on
Friday night has since turned into a civil war on social media between his
defenders — the Slimaniacs — and the supporters of his predecessor Phoebe
Philo, the Philophiles.

The latter accuse the superstar designer of grinding the artful
British
creator’s feminist legacy at Celine into the dust, replacing it with
retrograde “crotch-skimming cocktail dresses” for wafer-thin teenage vamps.
Or as Lou Stoppard of GQ magazine put it, Slimane’s slash-and-burn
approach
to “Celine was fucking horrible. A big fuck you to women who just wanted
something non-demeaning to wear.”

Even Slimane’s fans admit that the man credited with inventing the
much-copied skinny and the oversized looks, drove a steamroller over
Philo’s
baby.
His scorched-earth approach included calling his show “Celine 01”, as if
the 70 years before his arrival at the brand had not existed, and erasing
Philo’s clothes from the label’s Instagram account.

Her back catalogue with its “great-fitting trousers” has since
reappeared
on two rebel Celine accounts, with her cerebral ad campaigns featuring the
likes of writer Joan Didion.

‘Is Slimane fashion’s Trump?’

Rubbishing the work of such an iconic female designer as the #MeToo
movement marked its first anniversary, and on the very night the world
squirmed at the Kavanaugh Supreme Court vote in Washington, was
particularly
bad timing.

“Is Hedi Slimane the Donald Trump of fashion?” the Hollywood Reporter
asked.
“Philo was notable for not equating a woman’s power with her sexuality,”
grieved The Guardian.
Jo Ellison of the Financial Times — who attended a Philophile wake
before
the show — simmered with barely concealed fury about Slimane’s approach
after
the decade of work Philo had put into making Celine a 800-million USD
brand.

“I’m not going to blub about how a catwalk that once offered chic
solution
clothes in which a woman could walk with confidence, was now awash with…
broken ballerina dresses in which a 17-year-old girl might walk the
streets,”
she thundered before twisting the knife.

Slimane, the recluse who had been hiding away in Los Angeles after
making
hundreds of millions for Dior and Saint Laurent, was hopelessly out of
touch,
she implied.
“The Celine show seemed to celebrate a world preserved in aspic —
super-skinny, teenage, and near exclusively white. I was hoping we might
have
moved on,” Ellison added.

Stiletto to the heart

Vanessa Friedman of the New York Times wasted no time on niceties.
“Two years ago when Mr Slimane departed fashion (and Saint Laurent), the
world was a different place,” she wrote. “Women were different… They
have
moved on. But he has not.”
Then Friedman delivered the stiletto heel to the heart.

“For those who feared that” Slimane’s arrival meant an end to “the
days
when Celine defined what it meant to be a smart, adult, ambitious and
elegantly neurotic woman — you were right.”
Tim Banks of the Business of Fashion website was equally withering.
“Slimane’s instincts for the moment have dulled, but his army of Slimaniacs
will surely canter towards Celine stores in blissful ignorance of the
brand’s
recent glories.”

Just as the ringing in Slimane’s ears was subsiding, Fashionista’s
Tyler
McCall branded him as a “one trick pony”.
Influential blogger Julie Zerbo followed that with the dagger tweet,
“Hedi
does Hedi (at Dior) does Hedi (at Saint Laurent) does Hedi (at Celine)…”
Of the major critics, the Wall Street Journal’s Christina Binkley was a
rare voice in warning against writing off Slimane’s Midas touch.
“When Slimane launched his thing at Saint Laurent, people hated it,” she
said.

But the critics and the brand’s owners, LVMH, “know the revenues are
about
to gush,” she said.
Fellow American fashion writer Mikelle Street agreed, observing wryly
that
“my favourite part of watching people tweet about Hedi Slimane is that they
don’t understand that there is a category of shoppers that follow him from
brand to brand. So he can really do whatever he wants.”

Slimaniacs, who have been waiting with baited breath for their hero’s
latest incarnation, jumped to his defence.
But Celine’s own Instagram account was full of angry and upset former
customers.
One heart-broken Philo fan seemed to catch the mood.
“I just realised why I loved (the old) Celine so much. It’s stylish,
it’s
comfortable, it has made clothes for the future female not depending on
size
and age. What I saw on Friday was going back several decades.”(AFP)

Photos: Celine SS19, Catwalkpictures.com