Селин Дион се съблече за Vogue

Here's a little naked fact to ponder while Celine Dion changes looks between shows: for the past five years she has worn haute couture near exclusively for her own performances (in Las Vegas and on her current "mini-tour" of Europe). She performs a minimum two hours a night, five or six nights a week, dancing and curtseying and generally gesticulating sans abandon, in handmade, hand-beaded delicacies designed solely to walk a catwalk or a carpet (and often with handlers). For Celine's orders, the houses send teams to Nevada for typically three fittings, before the garments are ultimately finished in her local, private atelier. Armani Prive, Schiaparelli, Giambattista Valli, Versace...only a partial list. Everyone, basically. In Vegas, Velcro panels are added to allow for her ribcage to expand or for a quick outfit change. Micro straps of elasticized chiffon prevent a slit from becoming a sloppy situation mid-squat. Shoes—always heels, never platforms—are ordered one size smaller (she is normally a 38) and refitted with metal shanks. Says Celine, "We have to make haute couture industrial." And, more enigmatically: "The clothes follow me; I do not follow the clothes." Which is to say: the haute couture, with all its fragility and handcraft, has to perform professionally for Ms. Dion. And privately as well. Years ago, Celine bought a classic little black dress from the Christian Dior atelier when the house was overseen by John Galliano. It is simple, falling to mid calf, and narrow as can be with just a hint of stretch. It requires a minimum of jewelry, a statement bracelet or perhaps one of the major diamond rings she designed with her late husband Rene Angelil: two pear cuts set in a wide pave band, or two hearts of diamond and emerald abstractly interlocking, on a cushion of yet more diamonds. This LBD forces you to walk one foot in front of the other. This is a dress Celine knows well and clearly loves, the simplest evocation of the private luxury of couture and the total antithesis of the red carpet hoopla that attends the union of fashion and celebrity. It is also the dress she wore to Rene's funeral. #CelineTakesCouture Photo by @sophfei.

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"They see me; I don't see them," is Celine Dion's line on the great blob of paparazzi and fans that follows her everywhere. She gives them any picture they ask for, plus a great many more. Consider an appointment with at the house of Schiaparelli, where she poses for the creative director Bertrand Guyon on a window sill overlooking the Place Vendome. She wears a tiny whimsical dress of Swarovski chainmail re-embroidered with yet more crystals and high sparkly Victorian boots--a little Twiggy, a little Tina Turner. Says her dancer Pepe Munoz: "That's a rockstar!" Says Libby Hahn, who handles public relations for the house: "I am fairly certain she was a rockstar before she put on the dress." Says Celine's own longtime photographer Denise Truscello (a Canadian cinephile with her own rockstar style), thinking of the long lenses poised on the place below: "Is the dress pulled down in the back?" Says Celine Dion: "They might see my butt, but I don't think they mind." #CelineTakesCouture Photographed by @denisetruscello

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Celine Dion is frustrated by fashion's current revolving door policy, the relentless firings and hirings at the top (amen to that!). She is concerned that "the dream" of elegance is disappearing, for as much fun as she had in her beloved Vetements Titanic sweatshirt (and we have Law Roach for that brilliant post-ironic gesture!), she believe in the magic of hats, gloves and total looks, of a world in which Lisa Fonssagrives could step from the pages of Vogue and through the doors of today's Ritz. Mostly she laments the red carpet hordes with the incessant questions about whose clothes and jewels one is wearing. "Mine" is her answer. Fashion is public for Celine; jewelry is personal. Sometimes, when she is at home in Las Vegas and missing her partner Rene, she slips on a caftan and all her jewels, and quietly retreats to her bath, sans children, sans fans, sans circus. #CelineTakesCouture Photo by @sophfei.

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In the minutes before her show at the AccorHotels Arena at Bercy, Celine Dion is presented with an award by the French division of Sony for her 2016 francophone release Encore en Soir. Dion thanks the clutch of executives assembled avec champagne and macaroons in the green room (hell, this is Paris after all) and reminds them quietly that this award means even so much more because the recording was her first without Rene and made during the most raw and difficult of times. Now it is a "diamond," meaning it has sold over 500k in France. Actually it has sold over 800k, and this is at a time when, hello, NO ONE BUYS RECORDS ANYMORE. Except for people in France who adore Celine, that is, nearly 20k of which are soon singing along--every lyric, every song--to their beloved diva. For a stadium show it is an extremely personal affair--everyone cries! --and never more so than when Dion's three sons make an appearance, via projection, during her cover of Michael Jackson's Black or White. Rene-Charles, aged 16, raps the King of Pop's spoken word bits, and when he is finished the twins, Nelson and Eddy, make a smiling cameo. Her children are not in the business--"I am not that kind of mother"--but they travel with her on tour and share some of her passions. Rene-Charles loves music and shoes ("the apple did not fall far from the tree") and, like her, habitually over packs. On this tour he has brought 70 pairs of sneakers. The 6-year-old twins Nelson and Eddy love to dress up, as kids do, and recently asked to have their hair cut and styled like James Brown. Yes, that James Brown. Tres difficile! Fun fact: It was Nelson and Eddy's love of Disney-era Zendaya that made Celine aware of the stylish teen star. She then clocked Z's picture on the red carpet and in magazines. So she googled "who is Zendaya's stylist," as one does, and found Law Roach. Yes, that actually happened. #CelineTakesCouture Photographed by @denisetruscello

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