Céline = Google

I walked into the Céline shop on Via Monte Napoleone in Milan yesterday to, I don’t know, torture myself the way an abider of the gluten-free life might while smelling fresh bread emerge from a Michelin-rated bakery, when I noticed the color scheme of spring/summer 2014, which showed last October in Paris and is now officially in stores.

“Nuova collezioni!” they will tell you as though it is a selling point that can eradicate the circumstances of a turgid — though, fine, not completely unwarranted — price tag. And said new collection bares a striking if not incredibly impressive semblance to another, putatively (and wholly subjectively) better-established color scheme.

For the surface grazers, there are the Céline classics dipped in novelty — Luggage totes, Trapeze bags, those mini purses (the Trio) that look like they boast three ass cheeks — which pridefully emphasize three to four primary colors. And for the decidedly loyal paladins of the brand, there are blouses and the jackets and the dresses that stick not to the age old Philo ethos of  “black, navy, white and grey or you can’t sit with us at the lunch table of initiated style” but instead pronounce a new one.

One I’d have liked to call Crayola Swagger but rectified quickly when a question occurred to me upon inspecting one such tricolored luggage tote with its prominent red wings and yellow curvature and blue handle bars in the shop yesterday.

Were the colors of Céline’s spring/summer collection inspired by Google’s logo?

I tried to Google it but nothing came up.