image and video courtesy ©Celine
Some debuts thunder into being, shaking the rafters. Michael Rider’s arrived in a hush: elegant, deliberate, and just a little too polite.
On a sun‑washed Paris afternoon, beneath a canopy of suspended foulards, Rider unveiled his first Spring/Summer collection for
Celine, a house that, for over half a century, has oscillated between the rigour of restraint and the allure of rebellion. His stated aim was modest: to honour the "language of Celine," to write his chapter without erasing what came before. And honour it he did. Perhaps too much so.
The collection itself was a quiet exercise in precision. Rider’s women glided through the silk‑draped set in masculine tailoring, knife‑pleated skirts, funnel‑neck trenches, and long, lean proportions, a wardrobe of Parisian archetypes rendered in navy, camel, ivory, and a whisper of cobalt. Silk scarves knotted at the neck evoked Philo’s intelligence; striped rugby sweaters tucked under blazers evoked a kind of Connecticut‑via‑Rive‑Gauche nonchalance. Charm belts tinkled at hips. Archive Phantom bags made their comeback as though nothing had changed.
