Day: 12/07/2021

Will Hedi Slimane Be Jealous?

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BOF just revealed that Phoebe Philo will have her own eponymous, backed by LVMH. Some designers are just luckier than others

Following the most hyped-up haute couture season in recent memory, the news now trending is Phoebe Filo’s return to fashion. According to Business of Fashion in a report earlier today, Ms Filo will launch her own label with some backing from LVMH, who has “taken a minority stake in the new venture”. The English designer was reported to have said, “I have had a very constructive and creative working relationship with LVMH for many years. So, it is a natural progression for us to reconnect on this new project.” This would only be LVMH’s second new label they’ve backed after Rihanna’s Fenty, which was “paused” in February. But Ms Philo’s own brand is expected to do much better. And she is a trained designer, with an unerring eye for the splendidly spare yet immense cool. And her ability and allure were proven too. Her reboot of Céline* in the early ’00s gave LVMH an extremely profitable label in its stable of high-profile luxury brands, improving the brand’s annual profits from €200 million to €700 million, according to analysts at that time.

We do not yet know when the new collection will be launched or if the name-sake brand will be shown in Paris or in London, where Ms Philo had led Céline with full creative control of the French house, and where she will reportedly continue to be based. Her return to fashion is thought to be unsurprising, only that it has taken this long. Ms Philo was mostly away from the limelight as she enjoyed a three-year hiatus from designing while her protégé at Céline, Daniel Lee, went on to re-awake Bottega Veneta. During this time, she was rumoured to be up for the creative directorship of Chanel, even Alaïa. Nothing came out of those speculations. Although quiet throughout the three years’ absence, she was reported to have already built the Phoebe Philo Studio in London.

It was while studying at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design that she met Stella McCartney. After graduating in 1996, she joined Ms McCartney as design assistant when her friend succeeded Karl Lagerfeld as creative director of Chloé. In 2001, Ms McCartney launched her own label in a joint venture with the then Gucci Group (now part of Kering). Ms Philo was not asked to go along. Ralph Toledano, then Chloé’s CEO, reportedly played on the rift and installed her as Chloé’s new CD. She was then only 24, but she was able to prove the massive promotion worthy, and continued to augment the brand’s cool-French-girl aesthetic. She left Chloé in 2006 to look after her young children. It was at Céline, where she joined two years later, that her star truly shone, turning the LVMH-owned label into the conglomerate’s coolest, seriously desired by women who enjoy fashion, not trends; designs, not looks. When she left Céline in 2018, supporters were encouraging Ms Philo to start her own label.

That is now happening for her. Not, unfortunately, for other designers linked to Celine, but unable to enjoy the same fate. No one knows if Ms Philo will revive the feminine simplicity that endeared her to so many of her followers. Or the equivalent of those capacious coats that predates the ones currently the rage everywhere, or those roomy, high-waisted slacks with the legs that distends and swirls at the feet, or the Boston tote (way ahead of Dior’s significantly simpler Book), or the Birkenstocks with the fur-backed straps, but there is a strong feeling that, with her own house to better give shape to her ideas, Phoebe Philo’s taste would still captivate, and her return would be the one to watch, and eagerly embraced.

*To keep to the Phoebe Philo-era Celine, we have chose to spell the brand in the old way: Céline. Photo: #phoebefiloarchive/instagram

Two Of A Kind: Clean Up Time

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Dress versus emoji. One needs mopping up!

So this is couture now? Of course, like everything else in fashion, including elegance and refinement, couture needs to be redefined. A clump of anything, too, can be clothes. To be sure, Kerby Jean-Raymond of Pyer Moss did say to Vogue, “I wanted to do this like Sesame Street and Pixar.” Still, the collection, despite their serious themes, really appeared like a big joke to mock Parisian couture. Do the French even know that they need a peanut butter jar as a dress? Or, a bottle cap as skirt? Is there ever a reason to dress like a supermarket mascot if you are not working for one? That it is custom-made with the best fabrics, is not going to make a difference if, despite the efforts, you look ridiculous or, worse, mad. But these are confusing times: Ugly is not, vanilla is. So it is possible that, for Mr Jean-Raymond, mad is rad.

Until this: a grab of an outfit that looks like something expelled from the body, emerging in the shape of a fo shou gua (佛手瓜 or Buddha’s hand gourd)! And for some reason, a mop is a good accessory. When we look closer, we realise that the garment is actually a padded coat of sort, worn over identically coloured pants. The similarity to the emoji is, to us, uncanny. It could be because we have been reading in the American media last week of the CDC’s amazing warning: “not to swim with diarrhea”, including a message on Twitter, “Don’t leave your mark at the pool this summer!” Even CNN ran a piece on it, with Jeanne Moos talking about “code brown on a slide”. We are not going to identify the colour of the outfit to stay on the side of the polite, and woke.

As the collection, called Wat U Iz by Pyer Moss and “imaginative” by the press, is supposedly a visual thesis on Black erasure and Black inventions, our comparison would be seen as inappropriate. Take it seriously, we hear people say. Mr Jean-Raymond used household objects and shaped them into supple couture, which seemed rather similar to the soft sculptures of everyday objects by the American artist Claes Oldenburg. The mop refers to inventor Thomas W. Stewart, who patented one with a clamp. In this composition could also refer to the domestic lives of black women throughout their history in the US, and the domestic work they do. And the arm grabbing the entire body, domestic violence they experienced? Or unwanted sexual advances? We are, of course, guessing. The Pyer Moss collection was reportedly assembled with the help of Hollywood fabricators and costume staff. Could this be to amp up the theatricality of the clothes and their kitsch-ness, just as the very show itself is to grandly celebrate the first Black designer to show on the official couture calendar in the Chambre Syndicale’s 150-plus-year history? Couture week may be less than a week in duration, but some of us are really pooped.

Photos: (left) Pyer Moss and (right) source