Celine ready-to-wear lands at Faradays this Friday
For a character that delivered approximately seven lines of dialogue across four minutes of screentime in a television episode that aired 19 years ago, I think a lot about Chloe, the haughty, chain-smoking teenage daughter of Aleksandr Petrovsky in the original Sex and the City series.
A nepo baby of the highest order, whose dad is the Damien Hirst of large-scale light installations, whose mother “represents accessories for the collections” and whose godparents are probably Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, Chloe is the exact kind of panda-eyed, Parisian party girl I envision at the centre of the moodboard for Celine’s winter 2023 collection, ‘Age of Indieness’, available from Friday August 18 at Faradays in Auckland.
An Australasian exclusive, Faradays announced in January that it would soon be adding Celine to its repertoire of international designer labels that includes Alaïa, Loewe, Givenchy and more. As well as carrying Celine leather goods – for which only a few points of purchase exist in Australia and New Zealand – Faradays now becomes the first and only independent stockist of Celine ready-to-wear in the Antipodes.
So what can shoppers expect?
Presented in December 2022 at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles where models stalked the runway to an original soundtrack by Jack White of The White Stripes, Celine’s winter 2023 collection is quintessential of the Paris rock-chic sensibilities of creative director Hedi Slimane, formerly of YSL. Not so much a nod as a headbang to the indie-sleaze, ’00s nostalgia informing some of today’s strongest sartorial trends, Age of Indieness features oversized shirting, cropped jackets, military accents, pops of paisley, graphic tees, vintage denim, lengths of leather, all designed to be effortlessly thrown together to an irrevocably stylish but ultimately unbothered effect.
A favoured aesthetic of Faradays co-founder and creative director, Constance von Dadelszen, celebrating the onboarding of Celine with such an emblematic collection is a story of stars aligning that goes far beyond the garments. Says Constance: “Securing Celine has been part of the Faradays dream since its inception. It is immensely humbling to have the opportunity to bring this legacy brand to New Zealand, with an offering that hits all the right notes from cult-status pieces to new-season treasures that we know will delight long-time lovers of the brand.”
Celine winter 2023 will sit alongside a large collection of core pieces, including signature leather goods, in store at Faradays, 8 Faraday Street, Parnell, from Friday August 18, 2023.