Hedi Slimane has entered the Paris Fashion Week chat with a short film that debuted across Celine’s platforms on Sunday morning. It’s been more than four years since the Celine creative director last showed a ready-to-wear collection in person, instead opting for a collection video format that other brands mostly abandoned post-pandemic. Directed by Slimane himself, the cinematic shorts have taken us on a grand tour of national landmarks from the Invalides and Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris to the beach in St. Tropez and a 17th-century château in the French countryside. The collection videos have typically dropped weeks to months after the official end of fashion month, but for summer 2025, he released it in the midst of the hustle and bustle.
Titled “Un Été Français” (A French Summer), it continues the cool ’60s vibe of Slimane’s fall collection with models in A-line mini skirts and broderie anglaise babydoll dresses wafting about a grand vacation home in Compiègne to a moody soundtrack of Nico and The Velvet Underground’s 1967 hit “Femme Fatale.” Let other maisons do naked dressing. At most, these girls show a little leg. They’re more into prim summer coats in suede or glazed lambskin and twinsets embroidered with crystals and silver sequins. They love a short, but not that short hemline for a day and an architectural black silk faille gown for night. Their heels are the very on-trend slingbacks of a sensible height.
Slimane has always been something of a youth culture whisperer, and here he’s ingeniously tapped into Gen Z’s obsession with nostalgia. He was channeling the spirit of French chanteuses Françoise Hardy, Jane Birkin, and Juliette Gréco with thick bangs peeking out from black silk jersey CC monogrammed headbands and dramatic cat eyes (courtesy of Les Yeux Celine, an eyeliner from the new Celine Beauty range). There’s always been a preppy undercurrent to Slimane’s Celine that brought the house back to its origins as a purveyor of bon chic bon genre loafers. Remember how his sophomore collection for fall 2019 managed to make pleated knee-length culottes a Thing? You can place your bets that this collection’s viral piece will be the pleated boarding school skirts in summer weight cashmere. Watch the full video below.
