"I wanted it to look optimistic," said a buoyant Phoebe Philo of her tented bubble and her collection. "It felt personal to me. I felt like celebration. If there is anything to say at the moment, let it be with love. Let it be joyful. I couldn't think of anything else to talk about other than something that felt joy."
The trench was her starting point and Philo described a very personal gesture she wanted to capture. "When it's raining, sometimes I'll put my coat over my shoulders with my bag underneath to protect it." That gave rise to the new 'double trench' - two coats in one , joined at the hem, with a cape-like outer layer worn over a more tailored coat. The shape was derived through experimentation. "It started with customising trenches and just draping them, playing with them, putting them on the shoulder," said Philo of that innovation. Then she moved into morphing jackets and dresses into one flowing piece.
If the oversized shapes she's been exploring of late whiffed of the early eighties, that was deliberate. "I looked a little bit at designers in the Eighties and they just seemed to have freedom and optimism... Pre-AIDS," she said and whiff is the right word. "Just the smell of it," said Philo, perhaps referring to halter dresses cut like men's trousers and hemmed in a gloriously thick fringe of fabric - a look which could have been inspired by that master of masculine/feminine subversion Jean Paul Gaultier. Beyond silhouette, there was craft and luxury.
"I got really interested in this 1970's Céline woman," said Philo who looked at advertisements featuring "this kind of Ave Foch lady that I've always been intrigued by. The idea of that woman is one of the reasons why I wanted to work at Céline."
That woman is the kind who leans toward tonal dressing and easy shapes in ultra luxurious fabrications. She's first in the queue for a supple leather poncho or a simple jersey shirt dress dotted with caramel coloured feathers. And why have ordinary leather trousers when you can have a pair crafted from chevrons of multicoloured skins, individually stitched to make up the whole.
"It's Céline. It's an elevated product," said Philo. It's such a privilege to be in Paris and to have that hand and have the atelier that Céline has. I just felt like leaning in on that and pulling out the most muscle we had." One liquorice leather trench, beaded and embroidered with exhuberant western-style embellishment, represents hundreds of hours of hand work. But despite the investment of craft , this collection wasn't heavy.
Philo talked of "the sense of joy and life force and just seeing where it went." The playful accessories best expressed that intention. There were paper bag shaped boots with tassels on the toes, that tossed and twirled with every step, and soon-to-be-cult clear plastic sack bags, filled with little leather mini totes. So deep was it with workmanship and ideas that this could be Philo's best Céline collection yet.
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