First Jil Sanders, now Dior, Raf Simons and one of the decade’s most influential designers. In 1995, at the age of 27, he launched his own menswear label. In his search for modernity, and wanting to go beyond the minimalism in which he often feels confined, his collections are complemented by an inquisitive eye for the street. What we think of as trivial, what we no longer look at, inspires Raf Simons. The designer is this voyeur, whose eye still perceives the details: fabric bracelets, torn sneakers and patched bags, which they make the new it.
Teenage trouble is everywhere in the streets. Invisible or unspeakable: an aesthetic of emptiness and boredom that finds expression in precisely cut clothes. Under the lens of Willy Vanderperre, the Autumn-Winter 2016 collection invites us to enter the teenage era and become an Orpheus, with wild hair, breaking with a frail, fragile face.
Teenage spleen, expressed with Raf Simon’s own artistic rigor, permeates the images in this campaign. Photographing male adolescence is one of his passions: whether on the streets of Brussels or Paris, he immortalizes mysterious faces that betray malaise and fallen love, and animate the mental imagination.
Raf Simons pays homage to the art world. He reinterprets the classic blouse, a compulsory school uniform. More than a protective garment, it is imprinted with the colors, movements and gestures of the artist in the midst of creation. The imposed nature of the garment is gone. Blown away by the lightness of adolescence, whose inventiveness constantly seeks ways to bring joy back to the simplest things. Whether through graffiti or sequins, young people are appropriating everyday elements, re-enchanting them, making them unique. The blouses in the countryside are full of adolescent typography, reminiscent of the opening credits of the legendary Virgin Suicide. Sofia Coppola’s film celebrates its 15th anniversary.
Disobedient with impeccable cuts, Raf Simons makes us want to lose ourselves in our adolescent torments, to rediscover that detachment from everyday life.
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