Hedi Slimane Unveils His First Celine Menswear Campaign

Less than one week after Celine announced that the brand would be joining the Paris men’s show schedule, Hedi Slimane has released his first menswear campaign film for the house.

Fans of the designer will of course recognise that the tailoring the male models wear in the three-minute montage of photographs and video is unisex. Industry insiders, meanwhile, will know that the gender-specific campaign is indicative of the fact Celine’s parent company LVMH is aggressively chasing the burgeoning menswear market.

So, what can we learn from Slimane’s first Celine short? Photographed by the designer himself in London in October, the animated clip homes in on key looks from the spring/summer 2019 collection to the soundtrack of French synth-pop duo, Ruth. The song, which was released in 1985, is emblematic of the Des Jeunes Gens Modernes movement – a time when creativity was booming against the backdrop of the Cold War.

As the portraits of men draped in Slimane’s ultra-slim suiting and a whirring Prophet 5 synth play on a loop, it’s entirely possible to enjoy the film without the history lesson, however. The stylised campaign might not offer any new insight into his vision as a designer, but it will certainly keep up momentum until the February sale date of the collection. The telling moment for the house will be whether or not it sells.

Young Thug Reps More Than Chanel In His New Music Video

Over the past decade or so, rappers have developed their own luxury-brand lexicons through their signature songs. Migos burst out on the scene repping Versace, of course; A$AP Rocky solidified his devotion to Raf Simons last year; and even more recently, Cardi B eschewed designers like Gucci, Fendi, and Prada in favor of her beloved Fashion Nova on the song “She Bad.”

On Young Thug’s latest mixtape, Slime Language, there’s a song called “Chanel (Go Get It).” Despite having the historic fashion house in the title, Thug’s designer references in the song run the gamut: He says that “Anything she want she can get,” whether it’s Chanel, Fendi, a Birkin bag, Louis Vuitton, or studded Louboutins with the spikes.

Accordingly, in the track’s new music video directed by Elliott Sellers, Thug doesn’t just wear Chanel — he dons a purple-fringed white jacket, a Dries Van Noten set, a yellow bandana, and a hot-pink Balenciaga turtleneck with chains, a combination that’s quickly becoming his signature. Thug’s clearly got opulent taste, but he’s not yet tied to any one brand in particular. Wisely, he’s keeping his options open.

So Long Skinny Jeans: H&M To Close Down Cheap Monday

H&M is shutting down Cheap Monday due to poor sales. The closure, which affects around 80 employees, will be complete by the end of June 2019.

“Cheap Monday has a traditional wholesale business model, which is a model that has faced major challenges due to the shift in the industry,” H&M said in a statement. “There has been a negative trend in the Cheap Monday’s sales and profits for a long time.”

H&M bought Fabric Scandinavian AB, which owned Cheap Monday, Weekday and Monki, in 2008 as its first acquisition as a parent company. The brands that the H&M group has since launched, including Cos, & Other Stories and Arket, have adapted to the retail shift online and continued to perform well.

“We need to constantly develop our business and what we choose to invest in,” added Anna Attemark, head of new business at the H&M group. “We see very good opportunities and great potential for all of the other brands within the business, which all are developing positively both digitally as well as through physical stores.”

For many, Cheap Monday was their first purveyor of skinny jeans. Such fans may have suspected that all was not plain sailing at the affordably-priced denim retailer after news broke in October that its Carnaby Street store – its only UK presence – was to close. It will now pull down its shutters at number 39 permanently on December 31st.

Met Gala 2019: Everything You Need To Know

What is the Met Gala?

The Costume Institute Gala at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is the biggest event on the fashion fundraising calendar. Founded by publicist Eleanor Lambert, the benefit was first held in 1948 to encourage donations from New York's high society. In its modern incarnation, the most famous faces from the realms of fashion, film, music and art come together to raise money for the Met's Costume Institute and celebrate the grand opening of its latest exhibition. The night is centred on the theme of the new exhibition, with previous themes encompassing everything from Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, to Manus x Machina, Punk: Chaos to Couture and China: Through the Looking Glass. This year's exhibition theme is Camp: Notes On Fashion.

Since 1995, the event has been chaired by US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who enlists public figures to serve as her co-chairs. Past hosts have included Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Amal Clooney and Rihanna. The Met Gala 2019, which marks the event's 71th anniversary, will be co-chaired by Lady Gaga, Alessandro Michele, Harry Styles and Serena Williams.

When is the Met Gala 2019?

The Met Gala takes place on the first Monday of May, which this year falls on May 6. Red-carpet coverage normally begins at 7pm local time, when team Vogue will begin reporting on all the outfit details.

Where will the Met Gala 2019 take place?

The Met Gala always takes place in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The night begins with a cocktail hour, in which guests walk the red carpet and explore the new exhibition, before sitting down to dinner and the evening's performances. The odds are on Lady Gaga and Harry Styles, this year's co-chairs, to take to the stage.

What is the Met Gala 2019 theme?

Andrew Bolton, curator of the Costume Institute, has framed the exhibition around Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 essay Notes on "Camp", which posited different ways in which the concept could be construed. Bolton told Hamish Bowles that he found Sontag’s writings so timely with what is going on culturally and politically that, “[he] felt it would have a lot of cultural resonance.” Read Bowles's full musings on what the Met Gala 2019 theme.

What will everyone wear to the Met Gala 2019?

“Camp: Notes on Fashion” is a fitting theme for the annual Met Gala, which itself is usually a stage for camp costumes, writes Vogue contributor Osman Ahmed in his exploration of the proposition. From Gucci, which is sponsoring the exhibition, to Valentino, Schiaparelli and even Demna Gvasalia’s Internet-fuelled camp fashion, explore what the guests might wear, here.

What Kering’s Termination Of Its Yoox Net-A-Porter Deal Means For Online Shopping

Kering is ending its joint venture with Yoox Net-a-porter.com and taking e-commerce for brands within its stable, including Alexander McQueen, Saint Laurent, Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta, in-house.

The French conglomerate, which was then known as PPR, established a deal with Yoox in 2012, to help power the online retail platforms for its labels during a time when it was still carving out a strategy. The partnership was slated for renewal in 2020, by which time Kering’s digital operation, which looked after Gucci's online offering independently, would have matured to an advanced level. Speculation that Kering, was taking back its business after Yoox, which merged with Net-a-porter.com in 2015, had been acquired by Richemont, a rival conglomerate, earlier this year, thus looks unfounded.

YNAP is keen to emphasise that the move was not unexpected and that its online flagship stores division is thriving. The loss of seven brands from its portfolio of 33 will not make a sizeable impact to YNAP's profits – in 2017, the flagship store service accounted for 10 per cent of total company revenues. "We continue to enjoy an excellent relationship with Kering and work very closely with them and their brands across our Net-a-porter.com, Mrporter.com, Yoox.com and Theoutnet.com multi-brand online luxury retail platforms," a YNAP spokesperson told Vogue.

The transition, which is expected to be complete in the first half of 2020, seems inevitable on Kering's side too, as online sales have become the luxury industry’s most important engine of growth. Will it attempt to build a rival to 24sevres.com, the website developed by LVMH to stock its brands? The team has already enlisted Apple to create applications for its sales assistants to scan inventories in order to support its plans. When the race to conquer the digital retail landscape is on – and the rewards of collecting private data on customer behaviour significant – no companies want to get left behind.

FASHIONmode 2 -´Lydia Metral - Life Thru´A Lens´

Here Charles Daniel McDonald sits down in conversation with budding French fashion photographer Lydia Metral, who speaks about her experiences within the Parisienne fashion and art scene.

FORÇ Magazine - FASHIONmode Show 2

Amber Heard Dives Straight Into Aquaman Press Tour

There are myriad of amphibious metaphors that can best describe Amber Heard’s look at the London premiere of Aquaman last night. But, the swimming cap itself speaks a thousand words.

Heard, who plays underwater queen Mera in the DC Comics adaptation, made a splash in London’s Leicester Square wearing Valentino couture autumn/winter 2019. Sea-green with swirling silver and gold embroidery, it was as if Pierpaolo Piccioli had made the gown and accompanying headpiece specifically for this moment.

Heard, steely with concentration, accessorised the head-to-toe ornate craftsmanship with a single bejewelled earring, gold neck chain and gargantuan gold Brian Atwood platforms that seemed to reflect her status as a self-professed “bad ass” of the ocean.

With a plethora of brilliant couture and evening wear – and brand endorsement deals to adhere to – it’s rare that an actor looks directly to the theme of a film to dictate a promo tour wardrobe (Blake Lively on the trail for A Simple Favor and Keira Knightly fulfilling her Nutcracker press dutiesare recent exceptions). When it happens, however, it’s a rather magnificent thing. As Piccioli told Vogue about the power of couture after the presentation of this particular gown: “It's fantasy, intimacy, emotions altogether…" Perfect for riding the red-carpet wave of an extraordinary franchise in.