“You don’t hear much about hope these days, do you?… They’ve forgotten all about hope, there’s only one great evil in the world today. Despair.” – Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies (1930)

Hedi Slimane takes us to the English countryside for CELINE Summer 2025 where the collection comes alive as models walk among the gardens of Holkham Hall to the trumpet sounds of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes. What is an English summer? Could it be English cloth or trimmed jackets, cricket, boating blazers, rowing jackets, and cricket whites? Maybe it smells of oak moss, cedar, nutmeg, coumarin, and cashmeran. Or perhaps it’s a bicycle, wicker baskets, canoes, and local cut flowers.

While studying at the Ecole du Louvre in the late 80s, Hedi Slimane began writing an essay on Anglomania from research on the Comte d’Artois, who initiated Anglomania at Versailles. The Bright Young revives this  30-year-old project by Hedi Slimane. CELINE Summer 2025 is full of early 20th century references conjuring up imagery of the Roaring Twenties, Francis Scott Fitzgerald in at the Hotel Eden Roc in the 20s to the derbie revival in the early 21st century. Throughout the collection, Hedi Slimane explores British sartorial codes including suits paired with hand-embroidered waistcoats featuring English field flower motifs while Silk faille gilets are decorated with English Gothic flower designs in sequin, crystal, and high-gloss silver, gold, and black pearls. With striking detailing and subdued romanticism, we are in the mood for an elegant summer without hints of despair.

Credits:
DIRECTED BY HEDI SLIMANE © HEDI SLIMANE
MAKE-UP – AARON DE MEY
HAIR – ESTHER LANGHAM
COLORIST – ALEX BROWNSELL
SOUNDTRACK – LES INDES GALANTES, 1736 THE OPERA BALLET “LES INDES GALANTES” IS THE BAROQUE MASTERPIECE BY JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU
FILMED IN JUNE 2024 IN HOLKHAM, NORFOLK, ENGLAND