Hedi Slimane Says Celine’s Catwalk Shows Are Defined By New Music Talent As Much As The Clothes

“It’s purely intuitive, I guess,” replies Hedi Slimane when asked what draws him to a piece of music. “I just immediately recognise the sound that reflects the character I want to depict in a show and that could give a rhythm for a specific allure and walk for the models.”

If you know anything about Celine’s artistic, creative and image director, you’ll know his lean tailoring, his ability to cause a ruckus with minor typographic changes (removing ‘Yves’ from Saint Laurent’s ready-to-wear branding, dropping the accent on the ‘e’ from the former Céline logo to better resemble the original ’60s design) and, of course, his rock music reveries.

Music is the cornerstone of Slimane’s aesthetic — his collections are a dedication of sorts to the musicians he admires; pseudo stage wardrobes set to the soundtrack of distorted guitars and gravelly vocals. “Without getting the music right, I cannot style the show, which can be very frustrating,” explains the designer and photographer. “The soundtrack and cast are what define the styling, its degree of credibility, its authenticity. What you hear and what you see are all part of one thing, one world as a whole.”

“In a way, I almost illustrate the sound, just like in a film or a music video,” he continues. “Sometimes it’s really hard and I only get the right track a week before the show, and the entire direction of the show shifts accordingly.”

Throughout the many stages of Slimane’s career, music has been a constant. From his youth frequenting Paris’s nightlife institutions such as Le Palace and Les Bains Douches to his days as creative director of Dior Homme (2000 to 2007) dressing legends such as David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. In 2005, Slimane published a book of his photographs of Pete Doherty and the British music scene entitled London: Birth of a Cult. And during his tenure at Saint Laurent (2012 to 2016), he launched the Music Project — a campaign starring music icons including Joni Mitchell, Marilyn Manson and Courtney Love, all photographed by Slimane himself.

Since his 2018 appointment at Celine, however, Slimane has chosen to spotlight French underground music. For his first show for the house, he collaborated with Marlon Magnée and Sacha Got of La Femme on a 20-minute composition featuring vocals by model Grace Hartzel. Then for autumn/winter 2020, Slimane scrapped his intended soundtrack just two weeks before the show in favour of the breakout single from Amélie Rousseaux — better known by her stage name Sofia Bolt — after one of his team attended an informal garage gig she organised in her adopted hometown of Los Angeles.

Bolt, who counts Iggy Pop as a fan and whose single All She Wants will be released on 21 April, says she had never met nor worked with someone as “serious and meticulous” as Slimane. “I got frustrated many times in the process, like, ‘Who the fuck cares that 15 minutes in, there is a little bit of reverb on the guitar?’ He would hear things that even I wouldn’t hear. But, of course, when I saw the show, it all came together. It was so cool because no one knows who I am and I was sitting in the second row, across from Carla Bruni, Isabelle Huppert and Jane Birkin, who was bobbing her head, and I was half laughing, half crying — it was a fucking trip.”

For Paris-based band Oracle Sisters, whose song I’m You was used for an online Celine campaign, working with Slimane has led to a multitude of opportunities. When the designer came across the band at a gig at the Paris venue Le Pop-Up du Label, lead singer and guitarist Lewis Lazar admits to being “a little sceptical at first” — thinking it to be a case of “a brand using bands to seem relevant”.

“But they’ve been incredibly generous and consistent, using our songs, inviting us to things, lending us clothes… Through them, we have a W Magazine feature with the photographer Tim Walker coming out,” explains Lazar. “It’s cool in the modern world, where there’s less of an obvious structure [for progression] for musicians, for brands to support up-and-coming artists and for it to be genuine.”

Nathan Roche, Marseille-based frontman of the Villejuif Underground — a star of Celine’s ongoing campaign Portrait of a Performer series shot by Slimane — concurs: “In the music industry, it’s very rare to get opportunities like the one I did, that we did,” he says. “There is this stupid [stigma] around musicians ‘selling out’. We are a small band, Hedi Slimane benefits nothing from us. As far as I know, he asked because he’s a music geek like us. And that’s what the world needs — more geeks.”

So why is scouting and supporting emerging musicians such an intrinsic part of Slimane’s work? “This is the whole point for me,” Slimane tells Vogue. “To use my position to promote, to give a visible stage to alternative music, or artists. I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years.

“Today, mainstream culture, promoted by social-media algorithms that favour numbers, leaves no chance for alternative voices. Sadly, the press does not make the effort to validate anything obscure. If I can do it through fashion or photography, I am happy to commit and help as much as I can.”