Flying the flag of Celine Homme, a young chevalier gallops on his black stallion toward the Château de Chambord, followed by a posse of fellow knights on white chargers. On the fantastical turreted rooftops stands a lone blond princeling, wrapped melancholically in a black cloak and a high-necked white frilled-neck Renaissance blouse. And so begins the dramatic unfolding of Hedi Slimane’s “Teen Knight Poem,” his “Nouveau Romantique” rallying call to the teen spirit of 2021.

Youth might leap to the conclusion that the scenery is some kind of CGI-created dream castle—but not at all. The Château de Chambord is a hunting lodge in the Loire valley built by the “Chevalier King” Francois I in the 16th century, a monument wreathed in French Renaissance history, chosen as a narrative background for a collection balanced between a flight of medievalist escapism and Slimane’s laser-keen contemporary focus on products to get contemporary guys buying.