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When Philo was 10, she customized her school leotard to look like Madonna’s. A few years later, her parents bought her a sewing machine, and she started making her own clothes. After high school, she studied fashion design at Central Saint Martins College in London, where she was drawn to mid-1990s minimalists like Helmut Lang and Jil Sander.
You can spot echoes of their work in her Céline collection, which is edgier than Sander’s but not as edgy as Lang’s.
“I was experimental at college, but in my own funny little way,” she recalls. “I’ve always been attracted to the wilder things, but not when it comes to my own work. I’ve always had a sense that if I can’t wear it, what’s the point?”