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DESIGNER

Michael Rider

Creative Director, Celine

American designer who returned to lead Celine as creative director in 2025, after Balenciaga, Celine under Phoebe Philo and Ralph Lauren.

Birthplace Washington, D.C., United States
Nationality American
Houses 3
Articles 90

Michael Rider returned to Celine as artistic director in 2025 after nine years in its studio under Phoebe Philo and six years leading women’s Polo at Ralph Lauren. His first collection drew from several chapters of Celine’s history: ample coats, sharper tailoring and a reworked Luggage bag, all under the unaccented logo introduced before his return. (WWD via Fashion Dive; W Magazine)

Rider began his working life as a teacher. He later entered Balenciaga’s studio under Nicolas Ghesquière, then became one of Philo’s senior designers at Celine. Those years gave him an intimate knowledge of how a collection is built long before his own name appeared on the show notes. (W Magazine)

An unusually indirect route into fashion

Rider was born in Washington, D.C.; his father was a nationally recognised authority on mediation and his mother practises civil rights and poverty law. He studied in the education department at Brown University, graduating in 2002, and spent a year in Brazil examining Paulo Freire's theories of pedagogy. (W Magazine)

After Brown he moved to San Francisco and taught seven subjects to eighth- and ninth-graders at the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland for two years. He later taught French to migrants in Calais. The decision to leave teaching for fashion, he has said, came down to timing: "I can always teach, but I'm not going to bust into fashion at age 50. I moved to New York and hustled." He interned in the Garment District under the designer Rogelio Velasco and worked at the consignment store Ina before pursuing an internship with Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga in Paris — rejected at first, then offered the position days later once he was back in New York. (W Magazine)

Learning construction as Ghesquière's "pin giver"

Balenciaga kept Rider after his first season, and he worked there from 2004 to 2008. During fittings he stood beside Ghesquière with pins and supplies, anticipating alterations as the clothes were tried on. Studio colleagues called him the “pin giver”. It was close, practical training in the decisions that turn a sketch into a finished look. (W Magazine)

A decade inside Phoebe Philo's ready-to-wear studio

In 2008, Phoebe Philo — newly appointed creative director of Celine — called Rider to come on as head designer, and he was made design director of ready-to-wear. He spent nine years commuting between the Paris studio and London on the Eurostar, through the period now remembered as Celine's defining modern era of minimalist, intellectually pitched womenswear. Work from those years is properly credited to Philo as creative director; Rider's role, like that of any design director, was to build her collections rather than to author them under his own name. (W Magazine; Fashion Dive)

Reviving the preppy handbook at Ralph Lauren

Philo's departure from Celine in 2017 ended that chapter, and in February 2018 Ralph Lauren named Rider senior vice president and creative director of the women's Polo business — the label's mid-priced women's line, distinct from the Ralph Lauren Collection runway. His task was to elevate that collection commercially and aesthetically at once. (FashionUnited)

He held the role for just over six years. Rumours that he was in line to return to Celine began circulating in the spring of 2024, and he stepped down from Ralph Lauren in May of that year; Karen Brown, an eighteen-year veteran of the company who had worked alongside him on the women's Polo repositioning, was promoted to lead the division in his place. (Fashion Dive)

Coming home to a house shaped by three other designers

Celine and its parent, LVMH, announced Hedi Slimane's departure and Rider's appointment as creative director within hours of each other on 2 October 2024. Celine's chief executive, Séverine Merle, said his "vision, creative talent, together with his genuine nature and strong connection to Celine's heritage" made him "a natural choice to continue to build a long-lasting success for the maison." Rider joined the following January and gave the role its entire creative remit — womenswear, menswear, leather goods, accessories and couture. (Fashion Dive; nss magazine)

His debut, shown on 6 July 2025 at the house's headquarters on the rue Vivienne, presented 72 looks for men and women rather than a clean break with any single predecessor. Reviewers read tailoring and coat shapes that recalled Philo's oversized silhouettes, a slimmer street-facing register that nodded to Slimane, and touches — pleats, colour contrast, a reworked Luggage tote with a curved zip — that referenced Michael Kors' 1990s revival of the house as well as Rider's own eye. Rider described his intent as clothing that "lives on, that becomes a part of the wearer's life," built from "memories, of usefulness and of fantasy" rather than a single governing concept. A third runway show followed on 7 March 2026 at the Institut de France for his Fall 2026 collection, and as of that season he remained Celine's creative director. (AnOther; Lampoon)

The handover was not entirely friction-free. On 6 September 2025, roughly a week after Rider's first Celine advertising campaign broke — shot in colour and sunlight, a deliberate contrast with the moody black-and-white photography Slimane had directed himself for six years — Slimane posted an Instagram story addressed to his former employer. He wrote that he hoped Celine would develop a photographic identity "free from any survival, borrowing or insistent reference to my photographic style," a comment widely read in the fashion press as a pointed request that the house move on from his visual template. Neither Celine nor Rider issued a public response, and the campaign itself was not withdrawn or altered. (FashionUnited)

Reading a Celine label across three creative directors

Rider retained the plain Celine wordmark that Hedi Slimane introduced in 2018 when he removed the accent from “Céline”. The logo therefore separates older Philo-era pieces from later ones, but it does not identify a Rider design on its own. For that, the season and style number matter more. (Refinery29; FashionUnited)

The accented "Céline" is a more useful marker on its own: it reliably places a piece before Slimane's 2018 rebrand, which covers the entire period Rider spent as Philo's design director. Those pieces, however, are Philo's collections rather than Rider's personal design credit — a design director builds a creative director's vision, and the two should not be conflated when attributing an archive garment. As at any house with a recent handover, retail delivery also lags a design season: Celine stock sold in the first half of 2025 may still be Slimane-era design conceived before his October 2024 exit, since Rider's first collection was not shown until that July. For garments from his time at Ralph Lauren, the useful boundary is Karen Brown's May 2024 promotion — pieces from the women's Polo line designed and shown before that date are Rider's; the label carries no separate marking to say so, which is where date of purchase or receipt becomes the only practical evidence.

References

Record
Education
Brown University, Education studies (2002)

Selected works

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