According to Celine Winter 2023, Hedi Slimane Wants It to Be 2006 So Badly

A model walks the runway at Celine at The Wiltern on December 08, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer:Getty Images for CELINE — Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for CELINE

Just last year, Hedi Slimane made headlines for eschewing skinny jeans — a longtime signature of his design aesthetic — for baggy ones on the Celine Spring 2022 men’s runway. Well, that didn’t last long.

Slimane seems to have fully regressed back to an aesthetic he helped popularize during the Dior Homme stint (2001 to 2007) that made him a fashion star. And after experiencing the blowout Celine Winter 2023 women’s show at The Wiltern in Los Angeles Thursday night, I feel like I’m regressing, too.

The Y2K resurgence has been going strong for a while now, so in a way we all knew where fashion’s nostalgia train was heading next. We saw the signs. But something about seeing all of those circa-2006 hipster trends parade down a runway — black skinny jeans, ultra-thin scarves, band jackets, low-slung belts over dresses and tunics, moto boots, fedora hats over unbrushed hair, large belted handbags carried exclusively in the crooks of models’ arms — was almost too much to handle.

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It didn’t help that, in true Slimane fashion, seemingly countless iterations of the same outfit walked the runway, and the soundtrack was just “Hello Operator” by The White Stripes, playing over and over for the entire show. Celine has always been one of fashion’s quieter brands, but there was nothing subtle about the way Slimane chose to revive this aesthetic.

Then there was the name of the collection: Age of Indieness.

Perhaps Slimane has been counting down the days until the trend cycle would come back around and he could once again start dressing up his exceedingly young, skinny models (yeah, that still hasn’t changed) like Kate Moss and Pete Doherty at Glastonbury, but some of us may not be ready to go back there. For me, these outfits literally bring back memories of college roommates stealing my clothes, my hair smelling like cigarettes, overdrawn bank accounts, painful insecurity, an unhealthy obsession with thinness and trying way too hard to be cool.

But maybe today’s youth — like the after-party guests who rushed the runway en masse to mosh while The Strokes played their aughties hits, and blasted analog cigarettes outside in between sets (Interpol and Iggy Pop also performed) — are yearning for an indie sleaze era of their own. I guess it wasn’t all bad the first time around, even without a budget for Celine.