Michael Rider’s Celine Spring/Summer 2027 show opened with a quote from Jennie Livingston’s iconic ballroom documentary Paris Is Burning. "I always had hopes of being a big star. But as you get older, you aim a little lower," said the voice of drag performer Dorian Corey. "You don’t have to bend the whole world (…) If you shoot an arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you." It was a fitting prelude to a collection fundamentally interested in the simple pleasure of getting dressed. Rider is not overly concerned with fashion’s power to be transformative. Rather, he called the collection "emotional dressing": garments informed by memory and instinct, underpinning ‘moments where you get a glimpse of possibility.
Here, the Celine woman appeared as a Parisian flâneuse: elegant, but with a streak of eccentricity. Look eight's floppy straw hat obscured the model’s face, recalling a distinctly 1970s-does-1920s vintage glamour. In look thirteen, simple white wide-leg trousers and a black turtleneck were elevated by an enormous, buckled belt. It recalled the enduring appeal of Jackie Onassis strolling down the Boulevard Saint Germain on a spring day, defined above all by a sense of ease. Eyewear was important throughout: circular 60s-style frames in black and pink lent the collection a mysterious, slightly camp B-movie noir quality, conjuring glamorous women slipping anonymously through hotel lobbies, their identities concealed behind dark lenses and curious hats.
Yet Rider’s references never veered into pastiche. Echoes of the 60s and 70s predominated, from the pleated, fringe-accented two-piece of look sixty-two to recurring oversized belts and equestrian hardware. In look thirty, Rider returned to the horsebit, a motif adopted by the maison in the early 1970s that spoke to the bourgeois sensibilities of its clientele. Its return felt fitting in a collection that imagined a wardrobe accumulated over time, rather than bought all at once.
That instinct was clearest in look seventeen: head-to-toe crimson, resplendent with broad 80s shoulders, mesh gloves, a long-beaded necklace and black glasses. At first, one might think of a child playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes. Yet the outfit’s eclecticism was mediated through a considered lens; somehow, it held the child, the girl and the woman all at once. Look forty-eight carried a similar generational quality, pairing a blue linen cape and matching trousers with a sultry black satin shirt. It was both day and night, slightly slapdash without becoming costumey. Even the bursts of color felt happily instinctive: Look sixty-eight arrived in joyful marigold yellow, its bohemian scarf-like tapestry pattern echoing the lemon dress of look twenty-two. The models looked as though they had raided wardrobes accumulated over decades - and had fun while doing it.
"I love when real clothes are worn spontaneously," Rider said backstage. In a world, and industry, increasingly shaped by algorithms and micro trends, the spontaneity at Celine felt quietly defiant. Personal style, itself at risk of obsolescence, is built through memory, inheritance and experience. It is the buckled belt borrowed from your mother and worn to a nightclub, or the straw hat found at a market in Tuscany. Rider’s Celine made a compelling case for meaningful dressing: clothes imbued with the memories of a life lived in them. Above all, it was a reminder of the pleasure of dressing up, simply for the sake of feeling fabulous.
