Michael Rider dresses Celine with bite

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Michael Rider raised a wooden attic in the courtyard of the Institut de France and wired it for sound. Celine's Winter 2026 show made the case that getting dressed is the event.

The show sat inside a giant timber structure behind the Institut de France. Rider lined it like an attic, bright and raw, with wood-and-steel speaker towers built by Matéo Garcia Audio. Prince came through the system as the models walked. The room was built for listening as much as looking.

It was a co-ed show, men and women in one cast. Tracee Ellis Ross, Sarah Paulson and Natasha Lyonne watched from the benches. The date was 7 March, the Institut a new address for the house after seasons on other stages. Rider used the space to slow the pace and let each look register.

The idea

Rider framed the collection around the act of getting dressed. His show letter put confidence ahead of concept and instinct ahead of plan. The clothes carried that reading. They looked chosen rather than styled, pulled together by someone with a point of view.

He describes his register as classics with bite. Familiar shapes, often sober, then sharpened or knocked slightly off balance. Tailoring stayed crisp. Cropped kick-flare trousers, wide-brimmed bowler hats and sculptural leather scarves gave the sobriety its edge.

The colour

Black ran through everything. Against it Rider set animal prints, a charged red and graphic squares that read like a code. Long floral dresses worked as a kind of camouflage, pattern used to hide rather than announce. The eye kept moving between the plain and the loud.

Leather did the softening. Jackets and trench coats fell heavy and enveloping, cut to wrap the body rather than armour it. Sweaters were knotted over suit jackets, layered the way people dress at home. Nothing looked untouchable.

The details

The small things carried the personality. Necklaces of hand-painted shells swung at the neck like talismans. Feathers caught in hair ties. These were the notes that turned a wardrobe into a character, the parts a wearer adds on her own.

Accessories held the same logic. The leather scarf appeared as a structural piece rather than a soft one, wrapped and set in place. Bags stayed firm and hand-held. Every addition looked deliberate, the choice of a person who knows what she is reaching for.

The house

Rider knows this house from the inside. He spent a decade at Celine as design director under Phoebe Philo before leading Polo Ralph Lauren in New York. He took over from Hedi Slimane and showed his first Celine collection in the summer of 2025. Winter 2026 reads like the season his Celine settles into itself.

Slimane had pushed the label toward rock glamour and a narrow silhouette. Rider has turned it back toward something worn-in and personal, closer to the quiet tailoring Celine traded on a decade ago. He keeps the polish and drops the pose. The result feels like a wardrobe rather than a costume.

The collection held one idea steady. A person picks up a jacket, a scarf, a shell necklace, and steps into the day as someone specific. That reading gave the tailoring its purpose and the colour its charge. Nothing on the runway reached for a slogan.

The Splendid Edit on Celine's Winter 2026 show by Michael Rider, staged in Paris. Details from Celine and LVMH.

Photography courtesy of Celine — Winter 2026, Paris