Hedi is on the move. Breaking news, designer Hedi Slimane has made a French exit from Celine. (We are sure he said au revoir really!).
The rumours that Slimane was leaving made this move a done deal months ago, though it is said that the house’s owners LVMH had been very keen to hang on to him, given the huge growth he has driven since his arrival at Celine seven years ago.
As if to run salt into LVMH’s wounds, the famously skinny-centric control freak left the best until last with his latest collection. His SS25 womenswear video collection for Celine was a masterclass in super-chic French classics, reminding us that, yet again, you can never be too young, too thin or too rich. The perfect cocktail for Chanel, to where, is where it has been widely speculated, Slimane is headed.
The scenario was a reminder of his Slimane’s last days at Yves Saint Laurent, saving those giant fox fur hearts until the end, making them museum worthy instantly. His monochrome rock and roll sensibility has been a timeless vein running through his aesthetic and his style by numbers of skinny leather jackets, cigarette trousers and wide brimmed hats has many well heeled fans.
They’ll be plenty more written about him, and plenty of fans who will follow him, wherever he ends up. Which takes us back to Chanel.
Former creative director Virginie Viard left Chanel at the beginning of June. Her aesthetic, particularly on the catwalk, didn’t have the finesse to elevate the house’s clunky tweeds and heavy hardware. The result was disjointed and frumpy and women don’t spend the money it takes to buy fashion at Chanel to look frumpy.
Chanel has been in limbo ever since Viard left and it is starting to affect the sales floor. A reliable source in one of London’s Chanel boutiques has said footfall has fallen and customers think the product is boring. Worse still, staff are finding faults in the products and having to send them back to the factories. The company also told UK staff that it wasn’t happy with its recent financial performance.
Chanel seems to be pursuing growth at all costs by raising its prices but it has failed to invest in its quality and design and has been found out. That said the studio collection it showed in Paris earlier this week (it was produced by the team without a creative lead) was better than any collection produced under Viard’s reign.
Drop waists and shift silhouettes dominated the runway.
Pursuing growth for the sake of it flies in the face of the values of a true luxury house, which Chanel believes itself to be. Axel Dumas, Executive Chairman of Hermès, which is widely held up as the pinnacle of luxury, was recently asked by the Financial Times whether it aspired to be bigger than rival Louis Vuitton. He said: “We don’t sell the same products [as Louis Vuitton], so surpassing their size is not a goal as such. There is very little comparison between us.”
We wonder what his response would be if he was asked about Chanel? Chanel has seemingly chosen the LV route, rather than the family-owned Hermès direction, when it comes to the quality of products it produced but it is charging near Hermès pries. Fleecing your customers year-in-year-out was always going to fail ultimately as a strategy: Chanel needs vision, modernity and quality.
The house’s most innovative release recently was the limited edition La Montre Première Sound ‘jewellery watch’ that transforms into a necklace, or a bag charm. It comes with earphones and retails for £12,600. It all feels a big distraction and is seriously off-brand.
While this week’s collection was an improvement, Chanel desperately needs a creative lead. What or who are they waiting for? It seems to be hanging around for no good reason and has been reported to have interviewed everybody who might fit the bill, some of them more than once. Names bandied about have included Simon Porte Jacqemus, Pieter Mulier and Marc Jacobs.
Chanel chairman Bruno Pavlosky was recently challenged on why it was taking so long to make an appointment. He said Chanel wanted a designer for the long run who would be loyal to the brand and it didn’t want to to be part of the merry-go-round of designers who move from one house to another every few years. It truly had something unique in Lagerfeld. who led the brand from 1983 until his death in 2019. While the brand believes it is bigger than any designer, it is now very obvious how important its designer was to its success, and while it doesn’t want just any designer, recent events have shown that it desperately needs someone.
Slimane’s SS25 Céline was like an audition tape for the Chanel job – he’ll no doubt rebrand it to CHNL! If he isn’t chosen, then whoever it is, they would do well to study his effortlessly chic masterclass of French female fashion.
Main image: Hedi Slimane takes a bow on the Celine catwalk (Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo).
