The Celine Spring Summer 2027 Collection Review

If anything defines Michael Rider’s Celine, it is how difficult it is to define. In trying to pin down the last two years of shows, aesthetic labels carry little weight. It is not the eighties, nor romanticism, nor simply something Parisian. The clearest vision emerges when we speak of energy: free, optimistic, warm, assured, playful, informal, surprising.

Like his predecessors, figures as revered as Hedi Slimane and Phoebe Philo, Rider does not use words to define his collections. He simply lets the garments speak for themselves, surprise through their style and be interpreted freely.

The show was opened by four total black looks, which gave little hint of the festival of colour to come. Staged at Les Jardins des Archives Nationales, beneath a white thatched hut, the setting gave the colours a particular prominence. The collection felt like an evolution of his menswear show in June: reds, aubergines, aquamarine greens, turquoises, yellows and electric blues found their place among the show’s more neutral pieces. At the start of the show, a recorded message from the film Paris Is Burning, spoken by the celebrated nightlife figure Dorian Corey, could be heard:

“If you shoot an arrow and it goes really high… Congratulations.”
Dorian Corey, 1990

The quote forms part of a reflection on the perspective of success, expectations and the mark one leaves on the world. The closing message concludes that to live is to leave a mark on the world, and that if some remember your name when you cross to the other side, your mission is accomplished.

To build his looks, Michael Rider’s recipe is intuition, as he told Vogue after the show. He and his team do not want to create an archetype or an exclusive story. What they are after at Celine is for clients to fall in love again with the art of getting dressed, to trust their intuition and to enjoy clothes as something lived in.

Among suits and dresses of seemingly traditional cut, details appear such as belts of gigantic proportions, cuts revealed only through movement, and new ways of understanding the formal. To admire a Michael Rider look is to admire the garments for their capacity for styling. Bloomer trousers alongside silk satin blazers, bags in energetic colours and aged shoes are only some of the details Michael brings to his work.

The collection will soon be available at OTTODISANPIETRO.

On arrival we were greeted by the Celine team, with pin badges on their white shirts. The badges carried the same message as the previous season: “Bienvenue chez Celine!” (welcome to Celine). This warm, discreet welcome prepared us for what we were about to find in the first room.

Drink of your choice in hand, the first room of the Haussmann space was entirely lined with the straw that covered the ceiling of the show. Walls clad in thatch stood alongside some of the show’s most intricate looks. The embroideries (visible in the following images) were striking against the freshness and simplicity of the collection’s main pieces: silk bloomer trousers gathered at the ankle, short black dresses and a selection of suits with an enviable versatility.

In the back courtyard, a small lush garden with a Roman statue, the enthusiastic voices of the Celine team, press and clients could be heard. The next room, which also opened onto the garden, felt like a garden pavilion, with enormous mirrors and a huge screen projecting the show. There were details in every corner: bags, shoes, scarves, as far as the eye could reach.

The third room kept the Celine rugs laid out on the floor the previous season, this time framing some of the crown jewels of the collection: knotted dresses woven with giant hand-threaded beads. As the team explained, the beaded dresses were designed so that, should they need repair, each knot is entirely independent. In other words, mending them would be easy and painless for the rest of the structure.

The second floor held some of the most fascinating installations. A wall adorned with jewellery and accessories from the show faced an impeccable selection of Celine Half Moon bags. A central, almost transitional room, covered in green bags and a few looks on hangers, led into an immaculate gallery. On the left, the full selection of the season’s black bags faced what looked like a buffet table: help yourself to the most spectacular Celine bag. A collage of some of the collection’s most coveted accessories was laid out on the table beneath a wall lined with silk scarves.

Finally, on the third floor, the lower ceilings invited a more intimate gathering with the characters of the collection. A Michael Rider show is like sitting down to admire the best-dressed passers-by in Paris: original looks, each different from the next, but with a shared emotion and a constant sense of being at home.