Celine is without a doubt my favourite show from Paris this season. Watching long limbed, Nitrogen fixated*, girls strutting up and down the catwalk in beautiful clothes provides just the same aesthetic effect on me as a Gerhard Richter. It works a similar sort of, albeit transitory, magic.
The palate used by Philo throughout this capsule collection is astonishing. Amongst a monochrome landscape of clever cuts, shocks of acidic and muted colours clashed sublimely, and delivered by blocks and lines created an abstracted geometry that proved tactile by an engagement with materials including furs and leathers. As one colour met another, and one surface nuzzled into another, the shift in materials reminded me of Bassets Liquorice Allsorts – the black iquorice kisses the yellow diced coconut. Very tasty stuff indeed.
Footnote: As you may know Philo is married to Max Wigram, the gallerist, so contemporary art and inspiration must be in abundance in that home, and I don’t know about you but I am itching to get in there and take an inventory of their art collection.
*Nitrogen fixation occurs naturally in the air by means of lightning
Quotation, Lucinda Chambers sums up the Celine autumn/winter 2012/13 show.