Hedi Slimane graduated with a degree in art history from the École du Louvre in Paris in 1992, after which he worked as an assistant to fashion consultant Jean-Jacques Picart. In 1996, Pierre Bergé brought Slimane to Yves Saint Laurent as men’s show director, and the following year promoted him to artistic director of the menswear line, Rive Gauche Homme.

Working close to Yves Saint Laurent himself, Slimane sharpened a thesis of menswear at narrowed shoulders and lengthened lines, the dinner jacket and the white shirt rebuilt at extreme proportion, the smoking reread for a thinner body.

In 2000, Slimane took over a new menswear project at LVMH’s Christian Dior, rebranded from Dior Monsieur as Dior Homme, where he stayed until 2007. The slim silhouette and monotone palette set a tight cut against the menswear of the era, with teddy jackets, riders’ jackets and sharp-lined boots joining the cigarette suit, the high-buttoned tuxedo and the slashed leather blouson.

The collections drew Karl Lagerfeld and the post-Helmut Lang generation toward Slimane’s frame, and in April 2002 Slimane became the first menswear designer to receive the CFDA International Designer award, presented to him by David Bowie, whom he dressed on tour.

He returned to the house in 2012 as creative director of Yves Saint Laurent, renaming the ready-to-wear Saint Laurent Paris, relocating the studio to Los Angeles, and growing revenues by more than 20 percent each year between 2012 and 2014 across a network of 142 stores before exiting in April 2016.

In January 2018, LVMH announced Slimane as creative director of Céline, and under his direction the brand dropped the French accent to become Celine, succeeding Phoebe Philo. The womenswear debut for spring and summer 2019 set short black dresses, sequinned slips and skinny tailoring against the slouch and camel coats of the Philo years, while in January 2019 he presented his first stand-alone menswear show for Celine, and the Triomphe canvas, the 16 bag and a revived Triomphe carriage clasp returned to the front of the house.

During his tenure Slimane more than doubled Celine’s annual sales to nearly 2.5 billion euros, before exiting the house in October 2024, closing a three-house argument in which the same skinny line has been pressed onto the archives of Dior, Saint Laurent and Celine in turn.