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Michael Rider is the new creative director at Celine, the LVMH-owned fashion house announced on Wednesday. His appointment will take effect in early 2025. He will have the entire creative responsibility of all Celine collections, including womenswear, menswear, leather goods and accessories to couture, the statement reads.
“I am delighted to welcome Michael back to Celine, a maison that he knows intimately. Michael’s vision, creative talent, together with his genuine nature and strong connection to Celine’s heritage make him a natural choice to continue to build a long-lasting success for the maison,” said Severine Merle, CEO of Celine.
Rider said: “Celine is a maison with values very close to my heart and a beautiful heritage to build on.”
It comes after Celine announced the departure of Hedi Slimane earlier on Wednesday. Rider’s arrival at Celine is a coming home of sorts. The American designer was previously employed as design director at the brand, working there for a 10-year period that spanned Phoebe Philo’s tenure. Most recently, he was the creative director at Polo Ralph Lauren, a position he held since 2018. He left Ralph Lauren at the end of May.
Rider replaces Slimane, who was installed as artistic, creative and image director of Celine in 2018 after Philo’s departure. Slimane, who previously worked at Saint Laurent and Dior Homme, dropped the accent over the “e” in Céline and introduced a new logo before his first show. His debut for Spring/Summer 2019 (where he added menswear) received “a raucous chorus of criticism”, wrote The Washington Post’s Robin Givhan. “In a single evening, he has blown up everything that Celine was, Flushed it clean. His name might not be on the label, but in every other respect, the brand might as well be called Slimane,” Givhan wrote. For AW19, he shifted to a bourgeois French girl look. This time, “it was a near-unanimous oui,” Vogue Runway’s Sarah Mower wrote.
At the LVMH annual earnings conference in January 2018, soon after the announcement of Slimane’s appointment, LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault said: “The objective with him is to reach at least €2 billion to €3 billion, and perhaps more, within five years.” At the time, Celine’s sales were close to €1 billion. Five years later, sales reached an estimated €2.6 billion in 2023, per HSBC, making it LVMH’s third largest fashion brand after Louis Vuitton and Dior — overtaking Fendi in terms of revenue. Slimane oversaw the introduction of Celine fragrances in 2019, and makeup (initially in the form of a lipstick line) is slated to follow this fall.
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