Celine Dion Is Not Here for Celebrities Who “Just Want to Be Left Alone”

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Harper’s BAZAAR has just unveiled their global icons issue, featuring Céline Dion, Loli Bahia, and Tao Okamoto across 18 editions worldwide. Dion covers the Harper’s BAZAAR US issue (and many others), while Bahia and Okamoto cover Italy and Japan, respectively. Dion’s cover won’t hit US newsstands until August 25, but the profile (and all it’s delicious photos) are live now on HarpersBAZAAR.com. (And the highlights, of course, are available right here.)

Celine Dion (Robin Galiegue for Harper’s Bazaar)

Dion was photographed by Robin Galiegue in Las Vegas (the site of her record-breaking residencies), where she was prepping for her much-heralded Paris residency this fall. She is styled in some of the season’s most opulent and elegant looks by Harper’s BAZAAR’s new style director at large, Malina Joseph Gilchrist.

Celine Dion (Robin Galiegue for Harper’s Bazaar)

Celine Dion (Robin Galiegue for Harper’s Bazaar)

As Jazmine Hughes writes in her profile of the megastar, who is on the precipice of her return to the stage following her diagnosis with a rare and debilitating autoimmune neurological disorder, Dion is “an icon to the gays/all of Canada (but Quebec especially)/lovers of heartbreak/West Indians/movie-soundtrack aficionados, inspiring a fervor strong enough to make gods jeal­ous.”

Celine Dion (Robin Galiegue for Harper’s Bazaar)

Dion shared with Hughes why she remains an open book with her fans. “I’m honest, and it’s not always pretty,” she says. “Sometimes it’s happy things, sometimes it’s sad, but it’s called life.” No one knows this more than her. “Instead of questioning life, can you live life? So I’m living my life, girl. I’m living the life.”

Here are some of our other favorite quotes:

On being diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder:

At times, Dion was in such debilitating pain that she could barely walk. Some days, she’d have to take a high dose of Valium simply to function. “It is a progressive condition. I don’t like to say ‘disease.’ Disease makes you go like this,” she says, scrunching her nose: “ ‘Kevin, you’re such a disease.’ ”

Celine Dion (Robin Galiegue for Harper’s Bazaar)

Celine Dion (Robin Galiegue for Harper’s Bazaar)

On what to expect from Dion’s five-week residency in Paris:

Tickets sold so quickly that she has already started selling dates for a three-week residency in May 2027. “It’s been so long, I would like to offer them something to show how I’ve missed them,” Dion says.

Annie Horth, her head of wardrobe and creative adviser, promises something “grandiose,” a show that will use broad architectural strokes to reveal the diva’s many dimensions. “She goes from intimate and romantic to a vocal powerhouse, so we are creating something where she navigates that,” Horth says.

Celine Dion (Robin Galiegue for Harper’s Bazaar)

On returning to the public eye with a new perspective:

Now that she is better, she returns back to work, even the annoying parts. But she recognizes that her relationship with her fans goes both ways. “Well, girl,” she says, talking to me but addressing herself, “if you don’t want to sign autographs and you don’t want to get yourself pretty and you don’t want to be disturbed because your pasta is going to get cold, you can always stay home. But look at what you have.”

Celine Dion (Robin Galiegue for Harper’s Bazaar)

On her documentary, I Am: Céline Dion, and why she chose to share her health journey so publicly:

They [her fans] deserved answers; in many ways, the only reason she got answers—a diagnosis after almost two decades of symptoms—was that she had the status afforded to her by her fans. “They paid for tickets,” she says. “They bought my records. They gave me that luxury. So the least I can do is tell them that I’m alive.”

Celine Dion (Robin Galiegue for Harper’s Bazaar)

Celine Dion (Robin Galiegue for Harper’s Bazaar)

On finding solace in nature during her years away from the spotlight:

“I love trees so much, and I had this vision of myself trying to disappear through the leaves,” she says. But it was fall, and the leaves fell, so everyone could see her, their baskets in hand. She couldn’t produce the apples they’d always come to her for. “I was trying to tell them, I’m sorry, I don’t have any apples to give you anymore.” Then she heard a voice: “But we did not come for the apples; we came for the tree.”

Celine Dion (Robin Galiegue for Harper’s Bazaar)

On singing in her family’s piano bar as a child:

Occasionally, young Dion would be allowed to sing one or two songs before her mother shooed her back home. Eventually, people started to call the bar to ask if the little girl would be singing that night. “Ten years old and I’m in a bar. I could’ve been arrested,” she says. “But you know what? The police officers joined and sang with us.” She smiles. “There was not a lot of crime then.”

Celine Dion (Robin Galiegue for Harper’s Bazaar)

You can view the original article HERE.