Does Celine have its eye on Polo Ralph Lauren designer Michael Rider?
According to market sources, Rider is the frontrunner to take over from Hedi Slimane, who is said to have notified Celine parent LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton of his intention to step down after an acclaimed six-year tenure that lifted the brand to new heights of influence and sales.
It would mark a return to Celine for Rider, who logged a decade as design director of ready-to-wear from 2008 to 2018, working under then-creative director Phoebe Philo.
Rider is currently creative director of Polo Ralph Lauren in New York, according to his LinkedIn profile.
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A graduate of Brown University in Rhode Island, he also worked as a senior designer at Balenciaga from 2004 to 2008.
Contacted by WWD on Tuesday, Celine officials declined all comment.
Neither Slimane nor Rider could immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday.
The exact timing of Slimane’s departure could not immediately be learned, but it is believed to be sometime later this year.
It may be hard to discern: The exacting designer has become fashion’s latest Greta Garbo, rarely making public appearances and granting interviews almost never. While most fashion brands have roared back to IRL shows after the coronavirus pandemic, Slimane has preferred to continue revealing Celine collections via painstakingly edited films — on his own timetable.
He unveiled Celine’s fall 2024 women’s collection online a few weeks after Paris Fashion Week — a youthful, polished take on the brand’s golden age in the ’60s — and it is understood his men’s fall 2024 collection film will be released sometime in May, nearly four months after most other European brands.
Despite his low-key profile, Slimane has built a devoted and growing global following for the brand with his finely honed rtw collections, leather goods festooned with Celine’s coveted Triomphe motif, high-profile brand ambassadors like Lalisa Manobal of Blackpink, and striking black-and-white campaigns he photographs himself.
At LVMH’s annual shareholders’ meeting last week, the luxury giant’s chairman and chief executive officer Bernard Arnault boasted about the exceptionally long lines in front of Celine stores in Japan.
It is understood LVMH wishes Slimane’s eventual successor to build on the brand’s momentum, and not stray too far from the winning template the Frenchman has forged, riffing on French bourgeois codes with sly winks to grunge and other alternative music scenes.
Alongside his fall 2024 collection film last month, Slimane teased Celine’s entry into cosmetics after a successful foray into haute perfumerie.
First up is a range of satin-finish lipsticks in 15 colors, hitting counters in January 2025. According to Celine, new beauty collections designed by Slimane are to be released each season, ultimately comprising lip balms, mascaras, nail polish, eyeliners and pencils, loose powders and blush cases, as reported.
Fully acquired by LVMH in 1996, Celine has cycled through a number of creative directors over the years, including Michael Kors, Roberto Menichetti and Ivana Omazic.
Slimane has a long and gold-plated track record of revving up heritage brands — and then stepping out at the top of his game. A recent report on LVMH by RBC Capital Markets analysts pegged Celine revenues at around 2.5 billion euros.
Slimane catapulted to international prominence in the late ’90s as the designer at Yves Saint Laurent Rive Homme, going on to design for Dior Homme, only to return to YSL and change its name to Saint Laurent. He joined Celine in 2018 and extended the brand into menswear and beauty categories.