Most creative directors are remembered for a look. Phoebe Philo is remembered for a way of living in clothes. In the decade she spent at Céline, from her appointment in 2008 to her departure at the end of 2017, she made a sleepy Parisian label into the most influential women's house of its time, and she did it with coats, trousers, flat shoes and bags that women actually used.
Nearly nine years after she left, the period has its own name, "Old Céline", and its own market. To understand why, it helps to look at what she built, how she left, and what has happened since. The house's full history, from its 1945 beginnings in children's shoes to the present, is on the Celine brand page.
From Chloé to Céline
Philo studied at Central Saint Martins and joined her friend Stella McCartney at Chloé as first assistant in 1997, according to The Business of Fashion. When McCartney left in 2001, Philo took over as creative director and made the house a commercial force, helped by "It" bags such as the Paddington. She resigned in 2006 to take a break, then returned to lead Céline in 2008.
The house she inherited, owned by LVMH since 1996, had cycled through several designers, including Michael Kors, without settling on an identity. The Guardian noted at the time of her departure that none of her predecessors had positioned the label as a global trendsetter the way she did.
"Back to reality"
Philo's own description of her approach, quoted by BoF from British Vogue, is the clearest summary of what made it different: "I felt it was time for a more back-to-reality approach to fashion, clothes that are beautiful, strong and have ideas, but with real life driving them."
In practice, that meant clothes designed with a woman's day in mind rather than a red carpet. The Guardian described the result as "blending artistic expression with functionality" and, latterly, "redefining luxury fashion as minimal and stripped back, but always exquisitely executed." Even her post-show bows became a style reference: she often took them in Adidas Stan Smith trainers, which The Guardian credited with helping push the shoe into the mainstream.
The accessories carried the message furthest. BoF singles out "the much-copied Luggage tote" as one of the cult items that drove double-digit growth. Collectors today also name the Trapeze and Cabas among the house's defining bags of the period, according to Harper's Bazaar UK.
The business case
It is easy to romanticise Old Céline as a purely aesthetic achievement, but it was also a commercial one. The Guardian reported that Philo's efforts tripled the brand's profits, and BoF estimates that the house was generating around $900 million in annual sales by the time she left. She won British Designer of the Year in 2010 and the CFDA International Award in 2011, and was appointed OBE in 2014.
The departure
Speculation ran for months before Céline confirmed, on 22 December 2017, that Philo was leaving after ten years. In a statement reported by The Guardian, she said working with the house "has been an exceptional experience". Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive of LVMH, called her tenure "a key chapter in the history of Céline". The in-house team completed the interim collections.
What followed made the break feel sharper. Her successor, Hedi Slimane, took the house in a very different direction, and, as Harper's Bazaar UK wryly noted, "Even Celine lost its acute accent." For Philo's admirers, the "Old Céline" label became a way of marking a closed chapter.
The afterlife: Old Céline on resale
The closed chapter turned out to be a market. Harper's Bazaar UK reported in 2023 that searches for "Old Céline" on eBay had risen 70 per cent after Philo announced her own label, and that on the sourcing app Sourcewhere it was the most requested brand for past-season pieces. Classic bags and runway pieces, the magazine reported, often sell for more than their original retail price, and Re-See co-founder Sabrina Marshall went as far as suggesting Old Céline had the potential to approach Hermès levels of investability. That is one dealer's view rather than market data, but it captures the mood.
The data has since caught up. The RealReal's 2026 Resale Report, published in August, found that saved searches for "Phoebe Philo Celine" rose 650 per cent, the largest of the designer-specific nostalgia searches it highlighted. The report also noted that the Gig bag from Philo's own label has risen 75 per cent in search interest since its October 2023 debut and averages around $2,000 at resale, according to Ethos.
The women behind that demand, as Harper's Bazaar UK found, tend to be buying to wear rather than to store. One collector told the magazine she owned "somewhere in the region of 300" Old Céline pieces and wore them every day. Another, a stylist, said that when she started her career "owning something from it was an unachievable dream".
Why the influence outlasts the clothes
Three ideas from the Philo years have proved durable.
Design for a real day. The notion that luxury should solve problems, not create them, now underpins much of what is sold as quiet luxury.
Restraint as signature. Old Céline was recognisable without a logo. That lesson has been absorbed by labels from The Row to Philo's own.
Scarcity through integrity. Céline was not sold online under Philo, as one collector reminded Harper's Bazaar UK, and Philo's own label has grown through deliberate "drops". BoF reports that her company's 2025 sales reportedly surpassed $41 million, tripling the previous year, with minority backing from LVMH and wholesale through Bergdorf Goodman, Dover Street Market and 10 Corso Como.
The house today
Celine itself has come full circle in one sense. Michael Rider, who worked under Philo as design director, was named creative director in October 2024 and showed his first collection in 2025, as covered on the Celine brand page. The RealReal's report already lists his Halfmoon bag among its "future resale stars", reselling close to its retail price according to Ethos.
For anyone building a wardrobe slowly, Old Céline offers a simple test that applies far beyond one label: would you still reach for it on an ordinary Tuesday, ten years from now? To see how Celine compares with its LVMH stablemates, try the brand compare tool, or find more designer profiles in the Journal.