It was during the 60s that Celine evolved from a children’s shoe company into a ready-to-wear womenswear brand, combining an inherent French sensibility with leisure nuances. A decade vital to the house’s heritage, and obviously to wider culture, last season saw Hedi Slimane outline a portrait of 60s style by way of Richard Avedon’s iconic photography. This season, Slimane continued his study from a different angle.

According to the show notes, it began with Slimane rereading Françoise Sagan’s 1965 novel La Chamade while listening to Nico and the Velvet Underground. It doesn’t get any more 60s than that. Both centred around women steadfast in their passion and self, Slimane’s SS25 collection presented a woman of equal mindset. Soundtracked by Nico and the Velvet Underground’s Femme Fatale, a track composed by Lou Reed in 1966 about Edie Sedgwick at the request of Andy Warhol, Slimane’s collection was, as has become customary for the designer, presented as a cinematic film, featuring 49 looks, 20 of which were couture.

Set at Château de Compiègne, a royal residence built for Louis XV, and the setting for Marie Antoinette’s first encounter with Louis XVI, the film begins with a girl sitting at a typewriter with a striking resemblance to the late French chanteuse Juliette Gréco. That’s no coincidence, according to the show notes Slimane met and photographed Gréco when they were neighbours in the south of France before her passing in 2020. Labelled the muse of Saint-Germain, Gréco was a trailblazing icon of post-war Paris: she hung out with Left Bank existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre, wrote songs with Serge Gainsbourg, had songs written for her by Jacques Brel, was photographed by Henri Cartier Bresson, and had a passionate love affair with Miles Davis. 

Titled, Un été français (a French summer), the collection honed in on the youthful liberation of the 60s in tribute to Gréco and her contemporaries. A time when fashion became democratised and ateliers found their way to the streets, of yé-yé girls with fringes as straight as their dress hems. Here, those characters were reborn in embroidered sequin twinsets, mini A-line skirts, hand-crocheted summer dresses, pleated boarding school suits and sculptural evening dresses crafted in black silk faille. Drawing throughlines as bold and precise as the models’ eyeliner flicks, epochs danced in harmony: the “indie lolitas” of the 00s music scene, disciples of Nico, Sedgwick, Sagan, Hardy, Gall et al, were celebrated as always, their babydoll dresses reimagined as silk dresses handcrafted and embroidered with feathers, sequins and giant Rhodoid flowers lacquered with crystals. Signifiers of the 60s were present throughout, reimagined with modern verve – suede, houndstooth, leather, bows, leopard print, checkerboard and capes – and Gréco’s gamine charm was echoed by Breton stripes, leather blousons and poplin shirts. (Gréco was arrested by the Gestapo when she was just sixteen and returned to Paris impoverished, borrowing boys’ clothes and inadvertently improvising her signature style that would set a new Parisian archetype.)

Through Gréco, La Chamade and Femme Fatale, through the 60s, 00s and today, Slimane’s SS25 vision was encapsulated by Nico’s soundtrack: “Here she comes, You better watch your step, She’s going to break your heart in two…”