The way that we dress often reflects how we feel – and vice versa, what we wear can impact our mood, too. It’s why we often turn to jogging bottoms and hoodies when we’re depressed, or dressing fabulously when we’re happy. Indeed, many of us dress for how we want to feel, with the dopamine-inducing effects of clothes becoming a popular sartorial philosophy. This is certainly the case for 58-year-old Canadian singer Celine Dion, who has debuted a series of frivolous and fun looks ahead of her comeback concert on September 12.
The singer – known for hit Nineties power ballads including My Heart Will Go On and It’s All Coming Back To Me – will perform 10 shows over five weeks at the Paris La Défense Arena, after taking a six-year break due to ill health. She suffers from a rare neurological condition, Stiff Person Syndrome, which causes stiff muscles in the arms, legs and torso, and can be extremely painful. At one point, the syndrome made it difficult for Dion to sing.
Following years of treatment, Dion is now ready to perform again. And her attitude to fashion proves it, as she’s showcased a variety of different sartorial personalities in the run up – from tailoring with jeans, to the classic “little black dress”.
Firstly, she was photographed leaving her hotel wearing a quintessentially Parisian chic look: a sculptural Alaïa trench coat with cut-out boots, and, of course, huge sunglasses. A few days later, she emerged wearing a brown boxy leather jacket, black cropped shorts and slouchy knee-high boots, this time by Tom Ford for Haider Ackermann.
Since, her repertoire has spanned a black leather Loewe little black dress – complete with shearling trim and asymmetrical skirt – and tailoring. She opted for a Givenchy fitted black jacket with accentuated shoulders and peplum detail, which she wore with straight-leg jeans with frayed edging and black heels.
This is not the first time that the singer has leaned on fashion during a time of struggle, or to help her recovery. In 2016, a few months after the death of her husband of 22 years, René Angélil, she hired the stylist Law Roach – the “image maker” credited with the red carpet ascendancy of Zendaya.
The duo worked on a series of fun looks together for her public appearances (including a Vetements-designed jumper emblazoned with an image from Titanic), and a Ralph and Russo couture white suit, teamed with a full-length cape coat, and a sheer layered corset dress by Alexander McQueen.
“I’m a firm believer that things happen when they are supposed to, and I think that us partnering up when we did and having that amazing time was meant to be,” Roach told The Telegraph in 2017. “She was dealing with... the death of her husband and her brother. She was going through a lot of tragedy and, these are her words, the dresses and the bags and these lighter moments have helped her with her recovery.”
“Beyond anything else, it’s just enough for me that this amazing woman has had a good time and that I could help in any way with her healing process,” he added.
“For me, clothes have always been an expression of how I am living my life. My style is idiosyncratic. Getting dressed is an expression of self-care, especially during difficult times,” says Dr Ute Liersch a Chartered Counselling Psychologist at The Soke in Chelsea.
“So it seems to be for Celine Dion. She has lived through profound loss and now lives with a chronic illness. We cannot choose the loss of someone we love or whether chronic illness befalls us. How she dresses, however, shows how she chooses to live with that which cannot be changed. This is not about denying difficult realities. It is about accepting them without surrendering to them. We cannot always change what happens to us. But we can refuse to let it decide how we walk this world.”
In the years since, Dion has worked on and off with Roach (including for the 2024 Grammys, when she wore a Valentino wrap dress featuring a plunging neckline and thigh-high split, with a burnt-orange coat on top), as well as with the stylist Annie Horth, who is helping her select looks for the upcoming Paris shows. Indeed, on stage, she has always leaned into her maximalist fashion personality, wearing bespoke pieces that run the gamut – from an Armani Privé gown featuring 25,000 crystals, to a Balmain minidress that weighed 30lb thanks to all its gold beading and metalwork.
One of the most inspiring things about Dion is that, although she’s always loved fashion (her 1999 music video for Then You Look At Me saw her wearing Alexander McQueen’s Space Odyssey-themed collection for Givenchy), she has fully embraced that passion in her 50s. And the fashion community has embraced her right back – she’s sat on the front row at numerous couture shows in the last decade, including Armani Privé, Giambattista Valli and Alexandre Vauthier.
As Roach told The Telegraph in 2016: “People knew her as the voice and this legendary pop icon, but she’s letting you see another side to her now. She’s reminding us all that fashion is something to be enjoyed rather than feared.”