Cult designer Phoebe Philo is back, and women everywhere are cheering

The former creative director of Celine, who amassed an adoring following designing clothes for “real life”, has long harboured ambitions to run her own label.

“I don’t like clothes imposing themselves on women”: Phoebe Philo, centre, at a Chloe show in 2004. Getty Images

Lauren Indvik

Jul 28, 2021 – 9.00am

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In September 2018, on the evening of Hedi Slimane’s debut show for the LVMH-owned fashion label Celine, a group of women gathered outside Paris’s La Bar Du Caveau to honour his predecessor, Phoebe Philo.

The “Philophiles” – among them fashion stylist Yasmin Sewell, jewellery designer Gaia Repossi and model Daniela Kocianova – were clad in roomy shirts, baroque pearl earrings and wide, pleated trousers, their cashmere jumpers tied cross-body in imitation of Philo herself.

Financial Times