Celine's Rider finds his thread in Paris with flower power and foulards

PARIS (AP) — Michael Rider’s second collection for Celine, shown Sunday in the Parc de Saint-Cloud, confirmed that his reset of the house is less rupture than weaving together its many pasts.

Where his July debut toyed with former Celine designer Phoebe Philo’s minimalism and Hedi Slimane’s bourgeois tailoring, at Paris Fashion Week Rider took a single motif — the foulard — and spun it into the season’s grammar.

Scarves were no longer accessories. They became structure: stitched into long, fluid dresses as if pieced from a dozen vintage squares; reshaped as silky tops; or peeking from the lining of an otherwise plain trench. Even handbags carried scarf fragments as decoration.

Around that anchor, Rider played with contrasts. Seventies flower power re-emerged in psychedelic A-line minis