EXCLUSIVE: Michael Rider’s First Celine Campaign Is Here

ALL SMILES: Michael Rider’s first campaign for Celine is in full color, drenched in sunlight and even features a smile — expressed via a curved zipper on a handbag.

Breaking Monday on Celine’s digital channels, the campaign was shot by Zoë Ghertner and puts a spotlight on the New Luggage line, including what’s called the “smile variation” that made some guests smile when it appeared on the runway in Rider’s debut show for the French house last July.

The campaign cues up the retail rollout of Rider’s first designs, starting with the global launch of the New Luggage line beginning Sept. 26. According to the house, it will be sold online and in select stores in Europe, the U.S., China, Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia and Oceana.

The full collection — which included strong-shouldered jackets, elegant cutaway coats, skinny pants and striking LBDs — is to arrive in stores around mid-November.

“Rider kept the best bits of the Hedi Slimane era, and the Phoebe Philo one — of which he was an integral part — and threw in some of his own recent past as creative director of Polo Ralph Lauren,” WWD opined about the spring 2026 effort.

Philo introduced the Luggage bag in 2010 as part of her first collection for Celine, and it has since been marketed in multiple sizes and guises, including a version with flaring gussets known as the Luggage Phantom.

Rider introduced an oversize, east-west shape to the offer; expanded the palette to citrus and oxide blue, and selected a range of fine materials, including shiny lambskin, suede calfskin and Porosus crocodile.

According to Celine, celebrities including A$AP Rocky, Julia Roberts and Meryl Street have been spotted carrying the newest variations of the Luggage franchise.

Rider’s first Celine campaign arrives roughly a week after his design predecessor, Hedi Slimane, took to Instagram Stories to urge the house to move on from the image template he had cemented during his six-year tenure, hinged on moody black-and-white photos Slimane lensed himself.