Alanis Morissette Reviews Michael Rider’s Celine Debut

SUNDAY 4:28 PM JULY 6, 2025 PARIS

On Sunday evening at the Celine atelier in Paris, Michael Rider made his long-awaited return to the label where he once worked under Phoebe Philo as design director—this time as the one calling the shots. Presenting both mens and womenswear, Rider paid homage to the tenures of both Philo and his predecessor, Hedi Slimane, hoping to capture, as he wrote in the show notes, “that attitude, or attitudes, that we feel describe who we are and what we stand for.” For Alanis Morissette, a lifelong devotee of the house, it was a pitch-perfect debut. “There was a perfect amount of risk,” she told our editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg after the show. “And a little bit of audacity, too.”

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MEL OTTENBERG: Hey, Alanis Morissette. What do you have to say for yourself after this Celine Fashion Show?

ALANIS MORISSETTE: I am so excited, and how I know I’m excited is that I’m sweating profusely. It’s the first indication of being blown away. The second the first piece came out I thought, “Oh, we’re home. Everything’s going to be okay.” And then it just went from there.

OTTENBERG: Home as in you’ll have somewhere to go shopping?

MORISSETTE: And also, just the respect of the female form. We want to be breathtaking as women. We also want to be comfortable, and we want to be able to run and throw a bunch of babies over our shoulder and maybe breastfeed them. So we need clothes to be able to do that.

OTTENBERG: I love it. My mother was a big Celine shopper long ago and then just felt forgotten. I started shopping at Celine through Hedi, but I know that sentiment.

MORISSETTE: And even in the ’90s, coming straight to Celine from the airport. And then the Phoebe [Philo} era was a dream for me. There was a little bit of rock element, there’s the androgyny, the whimsy, the risk. I saw some risks being taken today, which is exciting.

OTTENBERG: Risk is good.

MORISSETTE: Risk is needed, I think.

OTTENBERG: It’s shocking when you go to fashion shows over the last couple of years and there’s no risk.

MORISSETTE: It’s too restrained. It’s too safe. But there was a perfect amount of risk, a little element of rock. The fabric is ridiculous. And a little bit of audacity, too.

OTTENBERG: Do you have some shout-out outfits? I took pictures of everything. That white dress.

MORISSETTE: That white dress! There’s a structure, but a flow. I love the dualities of some rigidity, some well-placed rigidity, combined with the chaos and the movement, and the scary freedom. But the cuts and everything was just so exciting to me. The neutral tones, and then boom—bright yellow, royal blue. That’s my life in color. And the black fringy stole everything. I also love the jackets with the tan belts.

OTTENBERG: Wait, one more question. This music reminded me of your—

MORISSETTE: Meditation record?

OTTENBERG: Yes, you know exactly what I’m going to say. But I wanted to ask you, for someone who’s flopping out on meditating and cannot do it, how do you get it back? Any suggestions?

MORISSETTE: Don’t meditate.

OTTENBERG: Don’t meditate?

MORISSETTE: No. All you have to do is the word beingness. Just be, and that’s meditating.

OTTENBERG: I can be.

MORISSETTE: The indication of how far we’ve come with our trauma recovery and everything is how much we can be here in our body without jumping out. And I jump out all the time. I’m the queen of dissociation. But meditating is just beholding, watching the thoughts and the feelings and the sensations and moving between them. We can do meditation together sometime.

OTTENBERG: I’d love to.

MORISSETTE: This is where I think it’s not the meek that will inherit the earth; it’s the sensitives who are attuned to subtlety and nuance. And we have empathy and visionary capacity, but those so-called leaders we have right now in politics or otherwise—I’m not really that interested in following them into any towering inferno. It’s the artists who will lead us home.

OTTENBERG: Beautiful.