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Did you know that ex-Dior Homme designer Hedi Slimane now lives in the Hollywood Hills and spends his days shooting teenagers in Laguna Beach? Yes, the Laguna Beach of MTV fame. Also, from what he tells the Guardian, it doesn't look like he's interested in that now-vacant Dior job. "I really love to design but when it's a big luxury house there is so much things around the design. Like the global branding, like the window displays. Oh, it's so much. You just have to be happy doing it. If you're not, you're really miserable. And I have no intention to be miserable. I miss the fabrics and I miss the atelier. But if I really miss it that much, I would have started again already." UPDATE 3/28/11: We received this statement from Slimane's press attache: "The article of the Guardian is obviously, and certainly on purpose misleading. The interview was clearly done one day before the event in Paris, and not after. It is therefore unrelated, and sadly presumptuous. The Guardian wanted obviously to associate, juxtapose the two, after Dior's events, postponing the article. Hedi Slimane obviously never talked about, or even implied Christian Dior, or any other luxury house in particular. Hedi was, before any event, only commenting on global branding, and he does always answer the same thing :
Global branding is key to design in luxury brands. You need to be prepared for it." [Guardian]