In the middle of Paris Fashion Week, the focus of attention was on a designer who was nowhere near the runway; she wasn’t even in the city. It was on Instagram that Phoebe Philo announced that the second collection of her clothes and accessories would drop on March 7.
The selection, some of which is modeled by the Oscar-nominated German actress Sandra Hüller, includes $5,200 black leather jeans, a $2,000 silk scarf that doubles as a neck pillow, $900 ballet flats, and a textured fit-and-flare coat in pastel pink that’s too expensive to list on the site. It skews seasonless, which might be the most fiscally considerate aspect of the entire collection. The more you wear it, the less the cost stings.
Last season, Philo was trending in absentia as well. Would the British fashion designer, who abruptly and inexplicably resigned as creative director at Celine six years ago, launch her forthcoming namesake brand during the juggernaut of shows? Anticipation persisted for another month, until Philo finally unveiled her collection exclusively online on October 30.
Philophiles, as her fans called themselves, had gossiped and speculated about her return for years. This time, Philo was on her own, and on her own terms, working out of a small studio in her native London (rather than shuttling back and forth to Paris). LVMH had supported—and, importantly, marketed—every Celine collection. Phoebe Philo’s own label was intended to be the purest expression of the designer’s vision.
(LVMH is a minority shareholder in the Phoebe Philo brand, but as Philo said when this investment was announced in 2021, “To be independent, to govern and experiment on my own terms is hugely significant to me.”)
When the first collection finally launched, Vogue called it “the longest tease in fashion history. The Cut’s fashion critic Cathy Horyn, who saw the clothes and accessories up close at a private preview, wrote, “People are going to lose their minds.” But did they?
The first indication was the ambivalence among the very crowd that deified Philo during her days at Celine. Hardly any editors were wearing it at the shows—probably because very few could afford it.
When the brand launched, in October, before Philophiles even had a chance to drool over that shaggy shearling coat, they had to digest the sticker shock—$25,000. The least expensive item was a $750 pair of sunglasses. A very cool leather bomber jacket with a detachable scarf was an even cooler $9,000. A draped silk top that tied coquettishly with an attached scarf was $2,100.
Still, the critics loved it, at first. “It was the kind of movement that people have been waiting for,” wrote Horyn in the Cut. “She’s eliminated anything that doesn’t feel essential, cool, and brave but not ridiculous.”
Stylist Yana McKillop, who snagged the $5,200 peak-shouldered wool cashmere coat, was among those who invested. “It was a mad rush as things were selling out so quickly,” says the Dublin native, who owns approximately 60 pieces from Philo’s Celine collections.
Within hours, many pieces were sold out online. Some of those quickly landed on resale sites like Vestiaire Collective at double (or, in some cases, almost triple) the original prices, including the cheeky “MUM” necklace. Sarah Shapiro, the San Francisco–based fashion and retail analyst behind the popular newsletter Sarah’s Retail Diary, likened the shopping experience to a “collectors’ grab bag” mixed with FOMO.
Most wouldn’t even entertain such astronomical prices had it not been for Philo’s track record. “Phoebe creates desire for something we didn’t know we had,” says Beth Buccini, founder of the Kirna Zabête boutiques, which carried Celine during Philo’s tenure. “It was such a huge business for us.” Today, the @oldceline Instagram account has 359,000 followers, and Celine pieces from the Philo era are still trading heavily on retail sites like TheRealReal, Vestiaire Collective, and 1stDibs, which is asking $2,760 for a 10-year-old foldover-collar jacket from Celine’s Spring ’14 collection. (It’s a relative bargain when compared to Phoebe Philo’s prices.)
“I came into fashion when Phoebe was legendary but dormant, like a ghost, and everything coming onto the market was a reverberation of her impact,” says Laura Reilly, a former fashion editor who now writes the fashion-and-shopping newsletter Magasin. “I was mentally and financially prepared to make an investment. But when the site went live, I realized it was taking me more effort than it should to work up an interest in any specific pieces.”
Still, for several weeks, Phoebe Philo was trending on social media as fashion writers shared their shopping recommendations, and TikTok flooded with posts of women unboxing their scores. But then reality set in.
Some shoppers found the sizing to be inconsistent—some of the pieces that were intended to be slightly oversized looked two or three sizes too large. To return those baggy pants and droopy coats required clients to upload photos of the items to receive a shipping sticker. Before a refund was processed, the items had to be inspected and approved. “My first time [returning items], it seemed like they didn’t really know what they were doing, and it was super slow, but it’s gotten better,” says McKillop.
When the brand launched, in October, before Philophiles even had a chance to drool over that shaggy-knit coat, they had to digest the sticker shock—$25,000.
Others have taken issue with the limited size offerings. Despite Philo’s ethos as a woman for the people, she only sells up to a size 12. “If the brand imagery shows a diverse group of women of varying ages, shouldn’t that inclusivity extend to body shapes?” asked writer Brooke Bobb in Harper’s Bazaar. Before long, many pieces were back in stock.
When Philo left Celine in 2017, the direct-to-consumer model was just picking up steam. It remains a difficult proposition in luxury fashion, especially from an untested brand. At Celine, her quality was exquisite, but now that she’s on her own, she may not have access to LVMH’s fabric sources, ateliers, and production facilities. Some shoppers have taken umbrage with Phoebe Philo’s fabrics. “It just didn’t feel like a $5,200 coat,” said one shopper. “The fabric felt scratchy, the fit was off—it wasn’t nearly as nice as my Celine car coat.”
Most new fashion brands launch with at least some small presence in a boutique or department store so that potential clients can experience the clothes in person. It’s not easy to convince clients to invest in expensive items from a new brand, sight unseen—especially when the photos on its Web site are moody and impressionistic, without providing data or insights into how the clothes actually fit.
Philo is one of the very few designers who would dare to launch a new business by using hype as the sole form of marketing. And that’s because historically, her clients didn’t only feel spectacular because they looked great in those peg-leg trousers—they also relished the idea of being part of the club. They admired its founder not because she resembled the big sister of model Daria Werbowy and appeared on the cover of The Gentlewoman magazine—she made evergreen clothes that appealed to serious women, business leaders and fashion editors alike. And unlike almost everything else that the runways proposed, they could actually be worn to work. No wonder clients regretted only the pieces they didn’t buy.
These days, Philo doesn’t do many interviews; even those with only a nascent knowledge of the industry have probably heard rumors that she is press-shy. Historically, Philo has always designed for women her own age. (She turned 50 just before the brand’s debut.) “Her customer is someone who has grown up with her, likely in the 30s-to-50s age range,” says Shapiro. If Philo intended to expand her clientele to younger generations, she did nothing to court them. No banner ads, no Instagram posts, no billboards—fine. But it put a tremendous amount of pressure on the clothes and accessories to be completely irresistible.
Meanwhile, given her six-year hiatus, many of her customers have already moved on. “Most recently, I think O.G. Phoebe fans have found a new community in the real-clothes movement, and brands like Kallmeyer, Maria McManus, Attersee, and Tibi,” says Reilly. On the upper end of the luxury market, many women have migrated to labels such as the Row, Bottega Veneta, and Khaite. Now in the prime of their lives, they have already spent decades investing in their wardrobes. While they are still eager to augment it from time to time, there are other demands on their disposable income—especially, in a post-pandemic world, travel.
This second “edit” is an opportunity for the Philo brand to course-correct, but will it work? In the Puck newsletter the Line Sheet, Lauren Sherman reported that Philo may be opening shops-in-shop at a handful of retailers in Europe, the U.K., and the U.S. The French department store Le Bon Marché seems like a likely venue, considering it’s owned by LVMH.
Regardless, if Philo hopes to grow her business, she needs to generate new clients. Especially when the same women who have fueled her success for decades are no longer as susceptible to hype. “I’m trying to remind myself that it’s just clothes,” says McKillop. Meanwhile, Philo shows no intention of weighing in on the matter. Meanwhile, the fashion world has found another area of focus: her 18-year-old daughter, aspiring model Maya Wigram. She just walked the runway at Burberry.
Laura Neilson is a New York–based writer and a regular contributor to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal