Two decades on from her death, French author Françoise Sagan is having something of a moment. First, there is the upcoming film adaptation of her breakout novel Bonjour Tristesse, a melodrama of teenage lust and disillusionment set in the Côte d'Azur which Sagan published in 1954 aged just 18 (it would make her a sensation). Starring Chloë Sevigny, Claes Bang and Lily McInerny, the new film premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month and marks the directorial debut of writer Durga Chew-Bose.
And this weekend in Paris, Hedi Slimane looked to Sagan as inspiration for his latest Celine womenswear collection, presented via a short film titled Un Été Français (it would mark the first time in four years that the designer has shown his womenswear collection to coincide with Paris Fashion Week, which is currently taking place in the city). It was not Bonjour Tristesse, though, which served as the collection’s starting point – rather La Chamade, another tale of teenage disillusionment and lost love. It traces the brief, heady relationship between the carefree Lucile and penniless publisher Antoine in post-war Paris, fated by Lucile’s desires to live a life of luxury. It was adapted into a 1968 movie by Alain Cavalier, starring Catherine Deneuve as the flighty Lucile.
Celine Womenswear Summer 2025: ‘Un Été Français’
The designer said that it was a re-reading of La Chamade, while listening to the music of The Velvet Underground and Nico, which set the S/S 2025 collection’s mood. Riffing on girlish, 1960s silhouettes, the collection is also a nod towards the golden era of the French house in the 1960s and 1970s, when Celine became the unofficial uniform of the Parisian bourgeoisie. Here, Slimane conjures the era’s liberated spirit in abbreviated skirt suits and tweed twin sets, ‘boarding school' kilts and babydoll dresses (the latter nipped under the chest with a bow), alongside Breton stripes, printed silk scarfs, and 1960s-style floral prints (a rare moment of pattern from the designer). An impressive series of couture looks, interspersed throughout, include architectural black evening gowns and shorter styles adorned by thousands of beads, crystals and sequins. The ‘Teen Bag Joséphine’, meanwhile, is the season’s main bag, a nostalgic, ladylike style which recalls vintage handbags.
Meanwhile winged eyeliner – an homage, says Slimane, to the recently departed actress Françoise Hardy – and ruffled bobbed hair suggest an underlying mood of rebellion, a subcultural streak which runs through all of the designer’s work. The eyeliner is a tease of a new release from the Celine Beauté. line, which launched in Harrods earlier this month with its first product, the ‘Rouge Triomphe’ classic red lipstick. The eyeliner was designed in ‘the spirit of Greco’, say the collection notes, a reference to another muse of Slimane’s: Juliette Gréco, the late French singer and actress who he photographed in 2020 (one of the images is a close-up of her eyes drawn with thick black eyeliner). The winged style also references the 2000s indie music scene, a continuing fascination for the designer.
The accompanying Slimane-directed film was shot on location at Compiègne, an opulent royal chateau to the north-east of Paris, where Marie Antoinette met Louis XVI. In the cinematic short, the models walk amid its dramatic corridors and frolic in the vast grounds (in one scene, a model holds a lamb, a nod perhaps to the tale that Antoinette had a flock of perfumed pink sheep in Versailles). Lila Moss stars in the short, which is soundtracked by the Lou Reed-written Femme Fatale, performed by The Velvet Underground and Nico. It provides a companion piece of sorts to the S/S 2025 menswear show film, released earlier this month, which was captured in Holkham Hall on England’s Norfolk coastline and drew inspiration from Evelyn Waugh and his social circle of Bright Young Things.
Watch the Summer 2025 Celine film below.
