Last December, Hedi Slimane headed to Hollywood for his Winter 2023 Celine show, taking over the historic Wiltern Theatre for a collection titled ‘The Age of Indieness’. The high-wattage show – backdropped by a blown-up version of the house’s ‘Triomphe’ monogram’, here illuminated in lights – marked something of a return for the French designer, who lived in Los Angeles for several years before returning to France in 2018.
Half a year on, a new Slimane-directed short film captures the high-wattage event, which featured a phalanx of Hollywood stars watching on from the front row, and a slew of musical performances at the raucous after-party. These included Iggy Pop, The Strokes and Interpol, all of whom featured in the short film, released to coincide with the collection’s launch in international Celine stores this month (July 2023).
Revisit Celine’s Winter 2023 show in new film
The Wiltern and its opulent art deco interior – as much the star of Slimane’s film as the musicians and models – was first built in the 1930s as a vaudeville theatre. Stints as a cinema followed (it was known as one of the city’s foremost ‘movie palaces’), before being transformed into a cult music venue which has hosted performances from the likes of Prince, The Rolling Stones and Sonic Youth, among others.
Such a setting provided an apt reflection of the collection itself, which melded tropes of Hollywood glamour – around 20 per cent of the collection was the house’s couture offering, with diaphanous metallic dresses featuring tens of thousands of embroidered sequins and crystals – with the subcultural influences that have run throughout Slimane’s output at Celine and at Saint Laurent and Dior Homme prior.
