So ardent was the clamour for hugs and double kisses around Phoebe Philo after her Céline show at Paris fashion week on Sunday lunchtime that, by the time the designer came to speak to reporters, she had pulled off the camel sweater worn to take her catwalk bow. Under it she was wearing a black cotton T-shirt printed with Before The Dawn, the name of Kate Bushs current tour.
Bush was only an oblique reference in this collection the song This Womans Work (I should be crying but I just cant let it show/ I should be hoping but I cant stop thinking) was the soundtrack to the show and Philo, who saw her perform a few weeks ago, talked backstage about Bush not as a visual reference, but as someone who seems to really know who she is ... Im very impressed by that. Yet something in the way Philo, usually inscrutable and, deadpan and aloof, cast herself in the unlikely role of fangirl the tour T-shirt, the song on a loop spoke for what this collection was about. It was warm, immensely likeable, more feminine than the rigorous, almost brutalist chic Céline has come to stand for.
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