Gabrielle Boucinha, a freelance graphic designer, introduced her Instagram account in the wake of Phoebe Philo’s much lamented exit from Celine. Her feed, @oldceline, a compilation of images dating from Ms. Philo’s decade-long tenure at the luxury house, has drawn an ardent following, swelling from a few hundred in September, when Hedi Slimane was set to replace Ms. Philo as creative director, to a current 143,000.
Combined with a surge in sales of recent and more vintage Philo designs, that figure, Ms. Boucinha said, would seem to suggest a consumer reaction — a mini-revolt, if you will — unmatched in recent memory. “At luxury houses, designers come and go,” she said. “But I’ve never seen this kind of response to a switch in a house’s creative direction.”
As late as this month, when the new bag that Mr. Slimane designedarrived in stores, Ms. Philo’s champions (Philo-philes, in fashion parlance) were still chasing down trophies bearing the designer’s singular stamp, prowling shops and foraging for castoffs on eBay and consignment sites like Tradesy, Vestiaire Collective and the RealReal.
The rush appeared to signal disenchantment with Mr. Slimane, who in his debut collection for the house swapped Ms. Philo’s deftly underplayed, slightly masculine swagger for a steamier rock-meets-young-Hollywood look.
But that discontent only partly accounts for the recent spike in Philo fever. Supplies may dwindle or vanish entirely from stores, but demand remains robust.
“My spend on Celine increased this season,” said Ramya Giangola, the founder of Gogoluxe, a luxury brand consultancy. Spurred by what she called “the sense of an ending,” Ms. Giangola, who was in Paris during fashion week, went to Celine on Avenue Montaigne the weekend after Mr. Slimane’s runway show. At the store, the scene was hectic, she recalled.
“In terms of the crowds, it felt like being at Zara,” Ms. Giangola said. “There was the feeling that you had to grab it all, and if you didn’t, the next day it would all be gone.”
Rarely has an exiting designer been so pursued — or so eulogized.
“Bar perhaps Coco Chanel, I can’t think of another designer whose every piece was instantaneously ‘a classic,’” Lucy Chadwick, an influential art dealer, told T magazine earlier this fall. “In a time of eternally rotating fads and disposability and waste, nothing felt more necessary.”
The Nytimes
