Pared down and powerful: Celine Dion embraces her comeback style in Paris | Canada Voices

For most performers, booking 26 shows is business as usual. For Celine Dion, it’s more like a high-stakes wager and a test of will, rolled into one.

After putting live performances on pause in 2022 when she was diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome, a debilitating neurological disorder that made the physical demands of touring impossible, Dion officially made her return to the stage on Saturday with the opening night of her residency at Paris’s Plenitude Arena.

Expectations from the audience – which included Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Shania Twain, French-Malian singer-songwriter Aya Nakamura and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet – were high not only for Dion’s vocal delivery but also the style icon’s fashion choices.

Overseen by Dion’s longtime Quebecois creative advisor, Annie Horth, her wardrobe unfolds over a setlist of four acts and an encore. As Horth described Dion’s arc in Harper’s Bazaar: “She goes from intimate and romantic to a vocal powerhouse.” To achieve this, Horth collaborated directly with leading French fashion houses to create custom-designed dresses reflecting the singer’s chosen theme, her love of “Parisian savoir faire.”

After the curtains rose 47 minutes late, Dion began Act 1 in a black Dior silk dress, elegantly accessorized with a gleaming Boucheron necklace. The design idea was clear – this was a deconstruction and thoroughly modern reworking of French court silhouettes. This statement served as a visual co-star as triumphant as the soaring high notes Dion delivered during the act’s finale, a rendition of The Power of Love.

In Act 2, Dion opened with My Heart Will Go On – a cathartic volcano for the 30,000-plus crowd – and a militia-style black jacket and pants made by the house of Schiaparelli took the stage with her. The sleeves and shoulders were encrusted with thick scalloped bouquets of crystals bordering cut outs. It felt customized to Dion and the epic song, which remains the defining anthem of her career. The gilded shoulders nodded to both French military formality and pop history with a similar cut and swagger that fashion designer Zaldy created for Michael Jackson.

For Act 3, Dion wore a shimmering Tom Ford asymmetrical, strass-embroidered caftan dress to sing Dansons, her first original French song in a decade. The dress, designed by Haider Ackermann, felt like the only afterthought of the night. It didn’t connect to the original Parisian fashion strategy and rather than building up a stylish moment, its aesthetic slowed things down.

Thousands in Paris belt out Celine Dion tunes at outdoor karaoke event

However, a stylish pivot occurred when Dion came back for Act 4 and sang Ebben? Ne andrò lontana, from Alfredo Catalani’s La Wally. Choosing this aria would be an audacious move for any singer – especially a pop singer with well-documented health issues. Dion sang it with conviction, perhaps not with the same fire and power of those before her but the custom Givenchy look, designed by Sarah Burton, rose to the occasion. A dusty pink opera coat – brimming with plumes – fluttered with her as she delivered demanding notes. The gun-metal dress underneath met her poise and stature.

For the encore, All by Myself, Dion wore a sculpted leather corset and a velvet dress by Alaïa. Its space-age form echoed Grace Jones’s stage looks from the 1980s. When the footlights hit the bodice, the dress exposed what resembled a fluorescent open heart. Arguably, this fashion finale was made for TikTok.

Dion’s Paris moment feels eons away from the arena of glitter she propelled during her residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas (where she famously wore a 30-pound Givenchy jacket loaded with metallic hardware for a Michael Jackson tribute). Instead, the fashion curation for this moment is closer to what Dion wore to sing at the 2024 Olympics, an haute couture dress designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri for Dior. Canadian fans were able see the garment in all its glory on display in a recent exhibit by Montreal’s McCord Stewart Museum called Céline in Dior: A Dazzling Moment.

In many ways, the Olympic dress was a lighthouse for Dion’s comeback. To complement her voice and her energy, the silhouettes and palettes in Paris are exact and pared down. Nothing seems designed to reflect nostalgia or Dion’s former Vegas spectacle days. Instead, this new wardrobe proposes a different kind of pop divadom: one grounded in Dion’s renewed stage presence and an evolved fashion IQ.