UN ÉTÉ FRANÇAIS, CELINE’s video presentation of designer Hedi Slimane’s Summer 2025 collection, centers around a young heroine clad in a babydoll dress and thick black eyeliner, strutting down the Château de Compiègne with her preppy, feminine counterparts. 

The conception of the runway film struck while Slimane reread Françoise Sagan’s 1965 novel, La Chamade to the soundtrack of Nico and The Velvet Underground. The result: a collection of pieces presented within a film starring a reinterpretation of the novel’s heroine– one inspired by the aesthetics of French icon, Françoise Hardy, and Slimane’s very own documentation of London and Paris’ youth culture in 2003. 

Intercut with melancholic sequences of siren eyed girls wandering the fields of the palace in which it takes place, the film parades a collection of suspended silk dresses embroidered with two-tone feathers, sequins and giant rhodoid flowers lacquered with crystals; long and architectural evening dresses cut and draped in black silk faille; pleated boarding school skirt suits, tailored in light summer cashmere or hand-embroidered, with short summer coats in suede or glazed lambskin. Straying away from the tomboy aesthetic of the past few seasons, Slimane embraces 60’s femme– a culmination of indie club aesthetics and lolita fashion, presented in retro couture. 

When the film isn’t centered on the feminine figures of Slimane’s 2025 collection, it subtly presents a glimpse of CELINE’s newest creation in the haute parfumerie, the eponymous “UN ÉTÉ FRANÇAIS.” The perfume is captured sitting among a thicket of pink flowers, a motif which is present throughout the video. 

The runway film ends with chandeliers crashing down, Similar to the love affair between the protagonist in Slimane’s inspiration, La Chamade. The music fades out eerily, and the screen cuts to a black slate with the brand’s name at the forefront. Perhaps a nod to the novel, perhaps a tribute to the recent passing of the French icon which inspired the film, the wistful ending wraps up the film nicely, sealing a streamline of nostalgia that underscores it all.