Kaia Gerber and Hedi Slimane know that Malibu is a fashion capital

Hedi Slimane, who has been creative, artistic and image director of Celine since 2018, is a bit like the Boris Karloff-meets-Greta Garbo of greater Los Angeles. Every once in a while, an online fashion forum might light up with rumors that he’s been spotted browsing vintage T-shirts at the Rose Bowl Flea Market, or guests at an art world dinner will obsess over a supposed visit. at Frieze Los Angeles. The only real clue as to what Slimane is up to? Hedi Slimane’s diary, the collection of portraits he has maintained on his website for more than a decade. The Journal has the kind of cult following more typical of a zine or a mixtape, featuring moody kids with tough features all around, with occasional appearances from the likes of Debbie Harry. (For this one-time Tumblr teenager, shredding and pasting her thrift store T-shirts on the suburban mall tundra was the Bible.)

Now model Kaia Gerber, a Malibu native and close friend of Slimane, has joined the legion of Journal subjects. Recently, he stopped by her family home, wearing a leather jacket, scarf and black jeans. “Something I love about him is that he’s like me,” Gerber says in an interview. “He has a uniform and he just wears it.” He sat Gerber and her brother, Presley, with whom she has never been photographed, and shot the photos here. “It was kind of spur of the moment, Do you want to do this??” Well, of course! “Having someone in your house – Hedi is probably one of the only people I’d want to do that with.”

He put on some great music, of course –Electric mud, by Muddy Waters, which Gerber has basically listened to on repeat ever since — and it was “very light hair and makeup,” she says. “He is such a genius. He knows what he wants. We can do a lot in a day. And we will take a long break in the middle of the day. It really doesn’t feel like work.”

What makes Diary images so unique as an art project is that most fashion or fashion images are about evoking a fantasy or playing pretend. Slimane’s images are about the life that he and his close circle are actually living. Gerber says the two talked about “creating that form of intimacy that I think needs to be present to create images like this. I think the reason he’s shot so many incredibly iconic people is that he really creates that sense of intimacy that’s really hard to get when you’re, you know, surrounded by a bunch of people.” She laughs. “This is a really beautiful environment to be around,” she adds, which is why the photos feel so uncomfortable. Even Gerber and Slimane’s dogs hung out. (Slimane’s dog’s name is Elvis. And he has beautiful hair. “I’m like, of course your dog would have beautiful hair!”)

Gerber also questions whether the power of Slimane’s photography is that he is designing the clothes AND taking pictures, which rarely (if ever) happens in fashion. “His attention to detail is something I’ve never seen before,” says Gerber. “Every bracelet, every earring—he has such an eye. He never forgets anything.” So he’s making minute adjustments to hair and jewelry while you’re shooting? Yes: “He’s a perfectionist of the highest order.”

The photos also have a timeless, distinctly Californian feel. Nowadays, anyone who thinks LA isn’t a hip city is just missing the point (and not just because of Robert Altman Long goodbye, with its sweaty suits and proto-influencers doing nude yoga and a hippie housewife in Malibu, is the best fashion movie I’ve ever seen). “Normally when we shoot it’s in the south of France,” says Gerber. “Seeing it in my hometown was pretty cool.” He knows Malibu like the back of his hand, she adds. “This is madness. Like the smoothie shop where my brother had his first job, he totally knew.”

Slimane sees Los Angeles, and especially Gerber’s native Malibu, as a subculture of style, which he has infused into the clothing, almost as gestures that only locals would recognize as local, but that can now be seen in the clothes of any cool person in Seoul or Tokyo. or London or New York. “I’ll go somewhere else and notice the impact that maybe I didn’t realize before,” says Gerber. His presence in the city has become a kind of myth. “I think he was always drawn to surf culture, and you see that so much in his collections, in his clothing. It was kind of like, the legend of Hed, like he’s somewhere around Malibu and he might drop you. There are people at my high school who were being photographed by him in a very similar way, right there [own] clothes, capturing that culture.” Even if Malibu is not rated as a fashion capital, its style influence has been huge under the reins of Slimane at Celine. “It is not appreciated that way. And I think Hedi made it a fashion thing, like a cultural moment.”

Sometimes, Gerber will look through his shows and think, “That’s so cool, I wonder where that came from! And then I’m like, Wait! This is something the kids at my school wore! But the way he does it makes you look at it in a whole different way and appreciate it.”

The two became friends about two years ago, around the time the pandemic brought the fashion world to a halt and Slimane entered a creative golden age with his fashion films. (You could say that TikTok revolutionized Celine’s menswear, and Gerber did the same for womenswear.) Now Gerber wears Celine almost every day, but she remembers thinking early on, “Oh my God, what should I wear for her?” met the cutest person with the cutest style?!” (She’s not alone: ​​countless fashion designers, from Nicolas Ghesquière to Jonathan Anderson, have baffled me about how cold Slimane is.) “I think it’s because simplicity and just being cool is one of the hardest things to do,” reflects Gerber. “And he just has it, down to a T.”

“He also makes the best of everything,” she continues. “He’ll take something and turn it into the best it could be.” Perfect blue jeans, perfect leather jacket. “He’s always been very good at picking things up. Maybe that’s the French part of him.”

“I love that this is all you need A jean-is your jean. Or that a jacket. I have this Celine leather blazer, which if you’ve seen a picture of me in the last year, I’ve probably been wearing it. This is how I like to wear my clothes. If I find something I like, I’ll wear it all the time. And I think that’s why I love Hed so much. He really does those parts where you can do that.”

But what are these two fashion fanatics really talking about? “He is very knowledgeable about music, about movies. He is truly an artist in the true sense of the word, where he is drawing inspiration from everywhere – images, architecture and furniture. He is very knowledgeable. He’s quite an intimidating person at first because he is who he is, but really, he’s such a kind, amazing, really smart person. Mostly, it’s just me asking him questions because I just want to know everything about how his mind works.”

The specificity of Slimane’s taste, his notoriously demanding nature, has also impressed Gerber. “It is very rare that a person [thinking]”Oh, I like this,” they ask themselves. why do i like this I think he is someone who knows this answer. And many of us cannot answer this question. I think working with him, I’ve actually learned what I like about things and why I like them and why I’m drawn to things.” Away from.