Michael Rider took Celine's Automne 2026 out to the sand and shot it at golden hour. The Riviera warmth of spring followed the house north to the dunes, and the clothes stayed the point.
Rider has been at Celine since early 2025. His first collection showed in the summer of that year, and the seasons since have settled into a clear register. Automne 2026 reads as the moment the house finds its footing under him, sober and worn-in, built for a wearer rather than a set.
The dunes
Rider reunited with Zoë Ghertner for the women's campaign. She has photographed his Celine before, and the two work in the same key. The images sit on open dunes, the light low and gold, the horizon left bare. Nothing crowds the frame but the figure and the sand.
The season reads as a sequel. Celine's Été campaign leaned on the French Riviera, all sun and salt water. Automne 2026 carries that warmth into autumn, the beach emptied out and the wardrobe grown heavier. The mood holds, the weight shifts.
Charles Levai and Kevin Tekinel handled the creative direction, with Nicco Torelli styling, Holli Smith on hair and Lucia Pica on make-up. The team keeps the images plain. No props, no story beyond the light and the coastline. The clothes read as the subject and the setting stays a backdrop.
The clothes
The collection runs across ready-to-wear, leather goods and accessories. Silk scarves knot at the throat. Triomphe totes hang from the shoulder in smooth leather. Chunky gold charms catch the light at the wrist and the neck, small and deliberate.
Rider keeps the house codes close. The shapes are familiar, the finish precise, the styling calm. A camel coat, a black turtleneck, a bowler hat, a pair of amber shield sunglasses stamped with the Celine name. He trusts a scarf and a bag to carry a look, and lets the landscape do the rest.
The signatures do most of the talking. A silk square folded at the collar. The Triomphe hardware on a tote worn against a plain coat. A charm dropped on a chain, gold against skin. These are the parts a wearer reaches for first, and Rider builds the collection around them rather than around a runway idea.
The menswear
Andrea Spotorno shot the men in black and white on the streets of Paris. The frames narrow in on detail rather than full looks. An embroidered patch on the seat of a pair of trousers. A charm bracelet. A shoe cut to show a little skin.
The clothes build from menswear staples given more force. Cropped belted leather jackets. High-waisted trousers. Calfskin jackets and crocodile-stamped lambskin shoes. Rider's American ease meets the Parisian cut, and the two hold each other steady.
Black and white suits the point. Stripped of colour, the eye lands on cut and texture, on the grain of leather and the line of a trouser. The men and women share the same wardrobe logic across the two campaigns, sober pieces sharpened at the edges and left to speak plainly.
Rider dresses a person, then trusts the person to finish the outfit.
The Splendid EditThe window
Celine pre-launched Automne 2026 in London before the campaign travelled wider. The pieces landed at The Corner Shop in Selfridges from late May, shown alongside the Été capsule. Window displays framed the house hardware in hard, clean light.
The setting borrowed from Takashi Homma. His series New Waves hung in the space, still frames of surf caught along the coast of Oahu. The water sat quiet in the pictures, the same stillness Rider builds into the clothes. Two coasts, one temperature.
The Corner Shop kept the pieces for a month, open from late May into the end of June. It gave Automne 2026 an early life away from Paris, a preview staged in a department store rather than on a stage. The campaign followed and carried the same still, sunlit tone.
The maker
Rider knows Celine from the inside. He spent a decade here under Phoebe Philo, then ran Polo Ralph Lauren in New York before returning to take the house from Hedi Slimane. The history shows in how lightly he handles the codes.
His note on the collection put feel ahead of ornament. He framed the season around character over costume, the idea that a wearer brings the personality and the clothes hold the frame. The campaign reads that way, each figure specific, each look pared to its useful parts.
Slimane had pushed Celine toward rock glamour and a narrow line. Rider has turned it back toward something quieter and more personal, closer to the tailoring the house traded on a decade ago. He keeps the polish and drops the pose.
The Splendid Edit on Celine's Automne 2026 campaign by Michael Rider. Details from Celine and LVMH.
Photography courtesy of Celine — Automne 2026