Celine’s fashion show held yesterday, March 7, 2026, in Paris was also a success for putting French designer Matéo Garcia’s work in the spotlight-or rather, in the box, we might say. The brand’s creative director, Michael Rider, transformed the interior of the Institut de France with huge sound installations created for the occasion by Garcia himself. A specially created sound system that treats sound equipment as an integral part of the set design, instead of just an anonymous technical infrastructure, as we are often used to seeing it. Materials, form, and construction thus become part of the visual design: the speakers remain visible in the space, instead of disappearing among the classical black technical structures of the stage, and dialogue with the clothes and the surroundings.
But who is Matéo Garcia? A French designer born in 1989, he trained in fine arts and drawing at ENSCI-Les Ateliers in Paris. His work revolves around the creation of “objects of potential use,” at the intersection of design and sculpture. In 2009, he founded the Manifart collective, beginning to experiment with sound objects and multidisciplinary installations, while later, an encounter with composer Roland Cahen led him to explore the spatialization of sound and the use of sound as a primary material.
He co-founded an international design agency in 2014, while continuing in parallel to create sculptures for private commissions and exhibitions, while also developing a high-performance listening system with architect and DJ Ressac since 2022. His work fuses design and sound to create sculptural and scenic speakers, made for Boiler Room and Nike through the SNKRS platform in 2023, among others. He finally founded Matéo Garcia Audio together with architect Marcelo Joulia in 2024, opening his own studio in Paris.
[📸 Courtesy of Celine / © Eijin Ota; Instagram: celine, mateogarcia_audio]
