In the summer of 2007 – part of the heady, early-aughts era the designer has referenced in his recent Celine collections – Hedi Slimane curated an exhibition at Arndt & Partner Gallery in Berlin. Evocatively titled ‘Sweet Bird of Youth’, it gathered a group of young artists who were part of a changing New York scene, one of both decadence and rebellion. The movement was perhaps personified by the late Dash Snow, whose polaroids captured his friends and their exploits; other artists featured included Terence Koh, Ryan McGinley and Nate Lowman.
Another was Banks Violette, a painter and sculptor born in upstate New York, whose works – sometimes deemed paint of the ‘New Gothic Art’ movement – riff on American motifs, from galloping horses to the stars and stripes of the American flag, often stripped to their essence and recreated in black and white. In 2022, Slimane reconnected with Violette, asking the artist to adorn pieces in his A/W 2022 menswear collection for Celine (an American flag by Violette, for example, was embroidered onto the back of a leather jacket).
