Culture

Celine Dion’s Absolutely Fabulous Mission to Outdress the World

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Celine Dion has recently been photographed looking amazing in a series of deliciously dramatic outfits. We are loving every minute of it.

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Music snobs have long turned up their noses at Celine Dion’s cheesy pop songs about love and faith, her earnestness and theatricality, all of it too sentimental and middlebrow and profoundly uncool.

Sure, her love ballads may not be as musically or lyrically complex as, say, Nick Cave’s. But they are unpretentious, unapologetic, and authentic—much like Dion herself, who is finally getting the cool-girl recognition she deserves at least among fashion aesthetes.

Dion has always worn couture during performances and at awards shows, but her flamboyant style has been on steroids lately in the best way, particularly at the couture shows in Paris last week (she’s also been performing there as part of her “mini-tour” of Europe).

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Celine Dion is on a dramatic and bold one-woman mission to revel in style, and make the world revel in it with her.

The 49-year-old Canadian singer drew comparisons to Lady Gaga this week when she stepped out in a dramatic, head-to-toe white ensemble—perforated cape, wide-brimmed hat worn over a headscarf—from Ralph & Russo’s fall 2016 couture collection.

Vogue followed Dion around the Paris couture shows for an Instragram series with the hashtag #celinetakescouture.

She was photographed on a balcony overlooking the Place Vendôme in a shimmery white Schiaparelli dress embroidered with Swarovski chainmail, which she paired with knee-high, lace-up white boots; emerging from her car outside the Dior show in oversized gold sunglasses and a belted, mustard yellow midi-dress (one of her more understated looks); naked on a chair while changing between shows, her arms and legs strategically crossed for a look that’s more R-rated than XXX.

"What is making the people who are interested in fashion now interested in me when I have always been interested in fashion?" So asks Celine Dion en route to the Christian Dior haute couture show, security guards in tow. She wears a tunic and mid calf skirt, tucked and belted and elevated by thigh high black boots. She has done her own makeup--as is her way--but her precise and dramatic eye contouring is obscured by the massive Dior gold shades selected by her stylist Law Roach (@luxurylaw). ("Why did you make me wear makeup if I was going to wear glasses like this?") Celine began working with Law a little over a year ago, after her husband Rene passed and she began the long road of living again with great loss of a partner ("an amazing man") but also the incredible blessing of "the quality of the time we spent together." More on that later. For now it is enough to know that while Law may have contributed to the answer to Celine's original question--why dion mania now?--the answer clearly lies with the lady herself. She keeps a master file divided into mini files of pages torn from magazines. She circles looks from collections special issues, turns down pages, and despairs when a look or accessory is not produced and the sample unbuyable. Celine Dion knows clothes. (She is also at a point in her life where she can enjoy them. Going to a fashion show "gives me a bit of freedom when my life has been work, discipline, hard hard work.") Today at @dior there was a little work (celebrity gridlock in and out, intense heat which is never ideal with leather) and a lot of fun. Celine admires Ruth Bell's gamine crop ("I really want a haircut like that"), the flatform boots ("the strength today!"), a wool coat dress for day with an open assymetric neckline ("like a calla lily"), the mousseline peering out from the long belted coats. After she said, "I forgot the jungle, the theme, I don't care. I am not buying the animals, the trees. But the clothes?" she smiles. "I am already broke." More on that later, and the significance of one legendary CD to another.... #CelineTakesCouture Photo by @sophfei.

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Part of Dion’s emergence as one of fashion’s favorite and most unlikely It Girls of the moment is owed to her stylist, Law Roach, whom she began working with last year after marveling at the looks Roach chose for young starlets like Zendaya and Ariana Grande.

“I always loved Paris Couture,” Dion said last year in a hilariously eccentric appearance alongside Kathie Lee Gifford on the Today show, when she filled in for Hoda Kotb. “What I’m realizing is that I want to play. I want to enjoy life… And I realize that there’s no age for fashion and to play with clothes.”

But the clothes don’t make the woman. Dion is stylish and cool because she has a theatrical, uplifting disposition and isn’t afraid of being mocked.

When she stepped out in a Vetements hoodie emblazoned with a photo of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, for example, she signaled that she’s both on-trend—in-the-know about one of fashion’s hippest brands—and that doesn’t give a damn if you hated her infamous theme song for the film.

That her fashion choices lately are as outlandish and theatrical as Dion, both the artist and the woman, makes her infinitely cooler than the music snobs out there. Enjoy the best of them here.

In her all-white Ralph & Russo runway look earlier this week, complete with an oversized hat that dwarves Lady Gaga’s wide-brimmed fedoras.

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Dion is Yves Saint Laurent’s disco cowgirl in a studded black jacket, pants, and megawatt sparkly boots by the designer.

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Part Aubrey Hepburn and part Carrie Bradshaw in a top by Dice Kayek, trousers by Celine, Tom Ford stilettos and a bag from her own fashion line.

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Dion stole the Giambattista Valli haute couture show last week in a flirty, funfetti-colored dress and burgundy thigh-high boots.

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Looking somewhat like an Easter basket in an embellished coat and emerald green trousers by Gucci.

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Dion steps out of her hotel in late June wearing a full-length python coat by Balmain, suede pants, and a graphic tee that looks like it came from Axl Rose’s closet.

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The singer goes full-on flower power in a Roberto Cavalli trench coat, matching blazer and wide-leg pants.

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