Fashion often isn’t intended to be overtly political, but it’s impossible not to see what we wear through the lens of what’s happening around us. Clothes reflect the times. They’re how we armor ourselves to move through the world.
Slimane did what he does best, what he’s been doing for years. But the context has changed; he didn’t read the room.
Responding to criticism of his Celine collection, he argued that women should be able to wear miniskirts if they wish, telling a French television program, “The young women in my show are liberated and carefree.”
Slimane continued: “For some in America, I also have the poor taste of being a man who is succeeding a woman. You could read into that a subtext of latent homophobia that is quite surprising. Is a man drawing women’s collections an issue?”