From industrial design to Dior: 10 facts about the career of Raf Simons
For the last year films about designers and fashion designers have become especially popular: several biopic films about Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino and Coco Chanel films were released. On March 5, another picture about the world of fashion is being released. The documentary "Dior and Me" tells about the process of creating the first couture collection of Raf Simons for Dior immediately after his appointment as creative director of the brand. The Belgian was given eight weeks to create the collection. Raf Simons is undoubtedly one of the main designers of modern times: a singer of minimalism and youth subcultures, he is the creative director of one of the main fashion houses Dior, while creating successful men's collections for his own brand Raf Simons. On the eve of the premiere of the film, we tell the main facts about a forty-seven-year-old Belgian to go to the movies savvy.
1
In college, Raf Simons studied industrial design and furniture design in the Belgian Genk and was a professional in this matter: he created interior items for small galleries of modern art. In 2014, he “went back to basics” and developed a collection of furniture and textiles together with the Danish company Kvadrat. The minimalistic and vibrant collection was shown at Design Week in Milan and received a lot of positive feedback.
2
The whole world of fashion should be grateful to Walter van Beyrendonk: it was thanks to him that Raf Simons became a fashion designer. From 1991 to 1993, Raf was an intern at the design studio of one of the craziest (in a good way) members of the "Antwerp Six". One day, Walter took Rafa with him to Paris Fashion Week, and the first ever show for Simons was the all-white Maison Martin Margiela show. It was this show that became decisive and pushed him to seriously engage in the design of clothing. The second main source of inspiration for Raf became things Helmut Lang.
3
Raf Simons founded his own brand of men's clothing in 1995 and continues to create collections to this day, inspired by street culture and rebellious aesthetics of youth. He was one of the first designers who brought street-style elements to Parisian catwalks. One of the strongest collections is spring-summer 2002, which is called "Woe Onto Those Who Spit on the Fear Generation ... The Wind Will Blow It Back". Models in balaclava scarves, completely white and red bows and T-shirts with slogans went barefoot through the halls of the Lycée Stanislas school with torches in their hands - and all this in 2001!
4
When Raf launched a personalized clothing brand in 1995, he didn’t make a show, limited to small presentations or a video show. The first show, which took place in Paris, was Spring-Summer 1997 season for Rafa. Then he showed images inspired by American colleges, punk culture and new wave. In 1999, he gave a show manifest. Models walked along the runway in their hands with black posters, where it was written: "Isolation", "Incubation", as well as the names of the dead soldiers in World War II.
5
Up to 2006, Raf Simons gave the names of each collection of his own line, and they are all admirable: “Disorder, Incubation, Isolation”, “Black Palms”, “Radioactivity”, “How to Talk to Your Teen”, “We Only Come” Out at Night "," Kinetic Youth "," Riot Riot Riot "," Virginia Creeper "," May the Circle Be Unbroken "," Icarus Surgit "- sounds like the names of the coolest movies that you want to watch right now.
6
One of the most important periods in the designer’s career is 2005 - it became a key one. This year, Rafa was awaited by the appointment of creative director Jil Sander, the release of his own book (in honor of the decade's own brand) and the launch of the second line of his brand Raf by Raf Simons. It is worth noting: designers launch second lines only when things are going particularly well. Year of success. In the same year, Raf presented the first retrospective of his work at the Pitti Uomo men's exhibition in Florence. The Belgian at this time was 38 years old.
7
Raf Simons is extremely successful in collaborations. One of the first was the collaboration with Fred Perry in 2008. His adidas sneakers are in the wish list or in the wardrobe of every second mod. Raf combined futuristic design and sniker culture and got to the point. Earlier, the Belgian created joint collections with ASICS, Eastpak and Linda Farrow, and last year he went further and created a ready-to-wear collection in collaboration with the famous American artist Sterling Ruby. Pants, shirts and coats, smeared with paint, immediately became iconic: this season KTZ almost exactly copied the design of the jacket and trousers - one of the signs of total success.
8
The main event in the fashion biography of Raf Simons, of course, the appointment of creative director Dior in April 2012. After the dismissal of John Galliano, there was a huge amount of rumors about the appointment: whether it would be Ricardo Tishi, Tom Ford, Edie Slimane or Nicolas Gheskyer. Raf Simons was appointed eight weeks before the couture collection, which is usually created in eight months, - the film "Dior and Me" tells about this process. The main thing that Raf did in the collections of Dior: left the form, removed all the extra details and added more technological materials, while maintaining the feminine spirit of the house and the ideas of Christian Dior.
9
The music on the show for Rafa is extremely important. Coincidence or not, but the release date of the album "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" of The Smashing Pumpkins coincided with the first collection of Raf in 1995, and for his first show the soundtrack was the song "Tonight, Tonight" from this album. Since then, on the shows of Rafa, Kraftwerk is heard (the band’s musicians took part in the show of the “radioactive” collection as models in 1998), then Sonic Youth (during the couture show Dior). In addition, the early collections of Raf were greatly influenced by the style of musicians from Ian Curtis to Richie Edwards. However, the Belgian himself remains a faithful admirer of Beethoven, Plastikman and The xx.
10
Kanye West and his stylist Virgil Ablo are big fans of Raf Simons. In 2008, Kanye even interviewed a Belgian for Interview Magazine. Not surprisingly, critics found a lot of plagiarism in the Kanye West collection for adidas. Virgil borrowed the idea of drawings and prints on military things for his brand from the Raf Simons collection in 2003, on which the designer worked together with British artist Peter Saville. The 2003 collection itself was devoted to the points of intersection between infantile things, clothing in poor areas and formal business style. It seems that all this Kanye and Virgil are still trying to combine.
Photo:Raf Simons, Kvadrat, cover photo courtesy of Dior
