News feed
Kaia Gerber was notably absent from the runways this season—opting to stay in her native Los Angeles rather than brave a socially distanced Fashion Month. That all changed overnight, with the top model making a surprise appearance in Celine’s spring summer ’21 show—filmed remotely (there was no physical audience) in a sports stadium in Monaco.
Gerber was, not coincidentally, the perfect embodiment of the brands’ new collection, in which creative director Hedi Slimane made a blatant pivot toward the Tik Tok generation. New York-based rapper Princess Nokia provided the soundtrack, while models strutted around the stadium in Celine-emblazoned caps and crop tops, high-waisted denim cut-ouffs and a range of flat shoes: sneakers, low-heeled boots and a new range of hiking boots.
Slimane’s controversial tenure at Celine has been defined by his elevated take on French bourgeoisie dressing—silk shirts, demure pleated dresses, perfectly-cut checked blazers and androgynous loafers are all signature pieces that appear, with slight variations, in each collection. This time around, the neo-bourgeois aesthetic got an athleisure makeover, with the addition of grey-marle ribbed singlets, high-top trainers and tapered trackpants.
To define the whole collections’ sensibility is to come full circle back to Kaia Gerber herself—they’re pieces made for the kind of girl-about-town who will gladly drop serious money on a perfect Hedi Slimane-tailored blazer, but who will wear it with sweats and sneakers during a coffee run. Considering how foreign the idea of ‘dressing up’ still seems in 2020—we have a feeling Slimane’s vision is going to strike a chord.
