Raf Simons: The geek who conquered the fashion world

[laika]

from today's Observer....

The geek who conquered the fashion world

He's
an intellectual Belgian with a passion for art and youth culture. He's
also the most influential menswear designer in the world - and his new
womenswear collection could change contemporary fashion. So why haven't
you heard of Raf Simons? Alice Fisher travels to Milan to meet the new
king of the catwalk

Interview by Alice Fisher
Sunday January 20, 2008


Observer

Jil
Sander's spring/summer 2008 womenswear show starts typically enough.
The elegant white showroom on Milan's Via Luca Beltrami is rammed and
the high ceiling echoes with the burble of gossiping fashion folk,
mainly dressed in the severe black of winter accessorised with the
obligatory sunglasses despite the fact it's 9.30am on a mild September
morning. But when the show starts the shades, for once, prove useful:
instead of dimming, the overhead lights intensify fiercely enough to
make you blink. It's an appropriate start to a show of clothes coloured
so vividly that the hues burn like retinal after-images.

The
models troop down the catwalk to a delicate plinking soundtrack of
Japanese strings. But something is slightly off; the atmosphere starts
to feel a little eerie. I wonder if it's because of the sudden downpour
that seems to be beating against the room's four arched windows. As
more girls go by - in navy minis, voluminous jumpsuits, dresses of
smoky grey tulle and shoes which look as if they're covered in elf
scaffolding or something equally otherworldly - I realise the sound's
not rain but the click of cameras. Since the show's start, the room has
become so quiet I can hear the photographers snapping away at the end
of the catwalk. A model passes in a transparent white top with what
look like thick paper clips dangling from its sleeves, and from my seat
I can hear the clips chink together. Normally, fashion shows are fuss
and noise and energy, but the Jil Sander audience is transfixed for the
duration. Until the startled applause at the show's end becomes a
standing ovation, the atmosphere is more art gallery than catwalk.

'It's
weird that you say this,' says Raf Simons, creative director of Jil
Sander and the designer responsible for mesmerising the world's
assembled fashion editors, when we meet in December. 'It's something I
hear more and more. People tell me that at the shows you can hear a
needle drop. I wonder: is it a Jil Sander thing or is it because of
what I do?'

Designer
Jil Sander's legacy is a great one, but Simons is being far too modest.
The 40-year-old Belgian has single-handedly saved the Jil Sander brand,
and any response to a collection now is a response to him. Best known
for power-dressing businesswomen in the Nineties, Sander is a
minimalist German whose sleek designs were the epitome of understated
luxury. But by the time Simons joined in 2005, the label's reputation
was in tatters. Sander had walked away from her own label twice after
she sold the company to the Prada Group in 1999 only to discover she
couldn't work with the conglomerate's CEO, Patrizio Bertelli (the
famously domineering husband of designer Miuccia Prada). Sander left
for good in 2003 and is now rumoured to work as wardrobe adviser to
German chancellor Angela Merkel. Before Simons arrived, critics and
customers alike had turned their noses up at successive seasons of
mediocre clothes stripped of the label's trademark extravagant fabrics
and severe tailoring. The line had lost its weirdly sexy Teutonic je ne
sais quoi (or should that be ich weiss nicht was es ist

So
the thought of Simons at Jil Sander thrilled the fashion world. His
name isn't well known outside the industry, but he's revered by fashion
folk. His eponymous Antwerp-based menswear label launched in 1995. And
over the years, though his collections only sold directly to a niche
market of young, cool Europeans, in the zeitgeisty, gestalt-ish way
that fashion works, his ideas had exerted important influence on the
mainstream. He was the first designer to put black, skinny suits on
young, skinny boys who weren't professional models. A collection called
Sometimes You Have to Fight for Your Freedom featured balaclavas and
Arabic keffiyeh scarves. It referenced anti-globalisation and
eco-terrorism; it was shown in 2001 just before 9/11 commentators made
much of the guerrilla element. But the show was also right on the
fashion money for its mix of hooded tops and classic tailoring. His
collections became known for their intelligent cultural references and
extreme, modern design ideas, which were then taken up and echoed by
other menswear labels. Simons always seemed to be driving things
forward. His work became known as futuristic.

'I
don't mind the association with futurism,' he says, 'as long as that's
not interpreted as using an aesthetic already known as futuristic. We
like to make things modern.' (Simons's answers tend to be complicated
but delivered in a gentle and straightforward manner.)

Giving
someone with such a reputation the keys to Jil Sander was inspired. And
though Simons's first few collections for the fashion house were
exercises in desk tidying, he rediscovered the soul of the label. There
were lovely tailored suits and the use of technical fabrics for both
men and women, and he also hinted at change by adding sequined and
velvet dresses to womenswear and slimmer trousers to the men's range.
But this season Raf Simons has stamped his identity on the label. The
classic Jil Sander silhouettes have vanished and the collections have
the grand themes of colour and light. Compared to this season's other
design inspirations - which include Batman (Luella womenswear) and the
Fifties (Gucci menswear) - it sounds ridiculously esoteric. But Simons
has made his ideas work. His dresses are colour-saturated; his men's
suits glow as if coated in phosphor.

And
for all the cleverness, the big themes, he only cares that people like
the clothes: 'Some critics and customers will automatically see we've
used Yves Klein blue and make the link; others won't. It's not a
problem. They don't have to know to find something beautiful, to
appreciate it.' For those who need to brush up on their art history,
International Klein Blue was developed by postmodernist artist Yves
Klein as part of an investigation into the colours that best
represented the concepts that interested him as an artist. And, no, I
didn't recognise that particular shade of blue at the show.

New
York Times fashion critic and fan of Simons's work Cathy Horyn thought
the new womenswear collection was revolutionary: 'It did things that we
in fashion have been waiting for. Transparency, light, colour,
proportion - it was new and will lead to something. This season's
[collection] will become one of those defining moments in the course of
contemporary fashion.'

Aside
from his remarkable current collections for Jil Sander, there is
another reason why the fashion world is particularly interested in
Simons. There has long been a rivalry between Simons and Dior Homme
designer Hedi Slimane. The two designers' use of pop-cultural
references, music, and the aesthetics and lives of real young men in
their shows provoked comparisons - and, perhaps inevitably, bad feeling
among Simons, Slimane and the various fashion editors who had
championed them. But Slimane's final collection for Dior Homme is
currently hanging on the sale rails. Once the last skinny suit and
final pair of black jeans have gone, so too will his presence in
menswear. He departed Dior Homme last year for pastures uncertain. With
Slimane absent from the shops and shows, Simons is now seen as the
undisputed best menswear designer working today. For someone most
people have never heard of, he's doing remarkably well.

The
man who stirs up such ardour and respect is unprepossessing in person.
Dressed in a black jumper and trousers, he looks a little gloomy next
to the gaudy white Christmas tree that dominates the marble lobby of
the Grand Visconti Palace hotel in Milan where we meet, but then so
would anyone other than Dolly Parton. When we sit down, however, I'm
the one who rifles through a wooden box of rare tea blends. Simons
orders a Coca-Cola. He says that the waitress brought him a rum and
Coke earlier by accident, but that it was a little early in the day for
that. It's nice to think of one of the most influential designers in
the world relaxing after work with a rum and Coke rather than Cristal.

Simons
is in the thick of preparing for the next round of shows - the
autumn/winter 2008 collections for Jil Sander and Raf Simons. Currently
he spends one week in Antwerp, the next in Milan, in order to devote
equal time to the two brands. He likes switching his brain from one to
the other and finds it easy. Simons prefers to do more than one thing
at a time. He taught fashion as a visiting professor at the University
of Applied Arts in Vienna from 2000 to 2005 (a position that's also
been held by Vivienne Westwood and Helmut Lang), has curated
exhibitions at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, and collaborated
with photographer David Sims on a book project. He loves his private
art collection (which includes work by sculptors Stephen Gontarski and
Don Brown; paintings by Dana Schutz and Daniel Sinsel) and also acts as
a consultant for the Cigrang Freres art collection in Belgium. Though
right now it's Fashion Week that he's focused on. Does he like the
shows?

'I
like very much to put on fashion shows. The performance is the last
control we have over the composition. We've made the clothes, the
colours, the fabrics - but after this it's not mine any more. It is the
audience's. Then it goes to stores and the audience does what it wants:
how people wear it is a new thing again, though it's a very fascinating
thing for me to see how it is integrated. But the show is also a
difficult period for me. I feel so much happiness and respect from the
audience that I do like it, but I don't feel in place. I like to take
these people [fashion editors, friends and buyers] very seriously, but
it's so fast you can't. There are 50, 100 people lining up backstage to
meet you and it's like' - he makes a brilliant industrial conveyor-belt
sound made perfect by his rolling, fricative Flemish pronunciation -
'sometimes I can't even remember they were there.'

For
a simple question, it's a complicated yet ultimately complete answer.
This is something that Simons seems very good at. As we talk about his
designs he never once feels the need to mention individual garments nor
deviate from a theoretical discussion of his collections. When pushed,
he does namecheck a Jil Sander dress with a circular cut at the back
which was a surprise bestseller (he thought the aesthetic and
prohibitive cost would limit sales). He thinks about commerciality, of
course he does, but that doesn't seem to be what fundamentally
interests him. For example, his attraction to the Jil Sander brand is,
he says, abstraction. 'The ideas are very much about material and
development, certain ideas that are abstracted to an aesthetic outcome
which an audience with an understanding of Jil Sander will link to...
whoa, that sounds complicated,' he chortles. Then regroups: 'I mean I
could tell a story very directly, and people would understand that
story. That's something we will never do here. I would do a dress that
would link to culture or the environment, but not in a way that you
would immediately see.'

At
the moment, when fashion is so lumpenly literal, it's an unusual tack.
Current trends tend to be no more complicated than 'the Sixties' or
'floral' and most styles only fly if they're snapped on the back of
young, pretty celebrities. Simons's dream isn't to find a place in
Lindsay Lohan's wardrobe - he dreams about the future. Although his
work over the years has referenced everything from skateboarders to
artist Anish Kapoor, futurism - or as he prefers it, modernity - has
been the driving force.

Horyn
thinks Simons is one of the few designers who has actually moved
fashion forward, too. She remembers with particular fondness seeing the
autumn/winter 2004 Raf Simons show: 'It was a Saturday night in Paris,
July 2004; it was the History of My World show, staged on escalators.
It was one of those truly rare moments. I've only stood up once for a
designer at a fashion show, but I wish I'd stood up then, because it is
still one of the great modernistic collections. [Designers] say they
want to talk about the future but it's rarely believable. This was.'

Simons
is in love with the future, because he thinks it's the most romantic
thing in the world. 'If I see a fashion show with literal influences,
it doesn't make me think any more. It doesn't make me dream. I
fantasise about what the future could be in terms of aesthetic and
psychology. It's the most difficult thing to do because you have to
start from the past - your favourite architect, your favourite song -
you take it all with you. Though I am very fascinated by the Sixties
principle of futurism - Paco Rabanne, Cardin, Courreges - who really
were thinking about the future. It was connected with romance then; all
the Americans were fantasising about the moon landing and how we may
live on another planet.'

And that's the psychological aspect that interests you? 'Oh yes.'

[laika]

Re: Raf Simons: The geek who conquered the fashion world



cont'd

Simons grew up in Neerpelt, Belgium. He
was an only child. His father joined the army at the age of 17; his
mother worked as a cleaner. Neerpelt has a population of 16,000 now,
and back then the only access to popular culture in this rural area
came from the local record shop, where Simons bought Kraftwerk and Joy
Division records as a teenager. Music has always been important to him
and he's referenced Richey Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers, Joy
Division's Ian Curtis and Peter Saville's Factory Records artwork in
various Raf Simons collections. He did well at school but resisted his
teachers' efforts to guide him in the sensible direction of law or
medicine, and instead headed off to study industrial design at college
in nearby Genk, a city dominated by car manufacture. He started his
professional life as a furniture designer but became fascinated by
fashion when the Belgian designers known as the Antwerp Six -
internationally, the best known are Dries van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester
and Walter Van Beirendonck - became famous in the Eighties. He says he
wasn't interested in fashion before then, he was interested in 'dress
code', which seems a very Raf-ian distinction. With the help of Linda
Loppa (then director of the Antwerp Fashion Academy) he worked as an
intern with Van Beirendonck and finally launched his first collection
in 1995.

Despite
his love of the future, Simons will never forget his past. Not least
because inspiration for his Raf Simons label is inextricably linked to
the lives of young Belgians, men embroiled in youth culture and life in
the country where he grew up. Since the beginning, Simons has cast
models for his fashion shows from Antwerp's streets. Some have walked
for him for 10 years or more.

'We
have a social, psychological dialogue with them,' Simons explains.
'From the beginning we wanted to work with young people and grow up
with them, but always catch up with new generations. I think the young
are very open to dialogue with older people, but it's not the same the
other way around. But you know, the office is not a social institution
- we don't have time to talk every day, but the guys come for fittings
and shoots. Antwerp's a small place, so you run into each other. I felt
very much helped by an older generation when I was young. The person
who made me believe in what I do now was Linda Loppa. I thought I had
seen a lot with New Wave and art and going out. Then suddenly I was
standing in her house and I found a mentality that was so open and
revolutionary. One generation can make the other dream about the future
and believe it. I don't want to be perceived by young people as this
old bastard complaining about them.'

It
actually sounds as if he would have reason to complain about them. Part
of creating a Raf Simons collection is asking these models what they
think of the clothes. 'Sometimes they say: "I think it looks like
shit." These kids from Antwerp, they don't care. If one in 40 say it's
shit, you think: he had no taste. If 20 say it, you think: maybe this
isn't what this generation is interested in.'

It's
this analysis of youth culture and the relationship with and interest
in young people which led to comparisons with Hedi Slimane, who
developed a similar relationship with his models in Paris when he
started at Dior Homme in 2000. But Simons doesn't want to aggravate the
situation with Slimane by talking about it. Though he does laugh at the
thought of being the best menswear designer - 'Well, that wouldn't be
bad for me!' - he wants to move on from any sense of rivalry. 'It's
just about me now, dealing with a new grown-up product.'

The
spring/summer 2008 Raf Simons collection is, in fact, grown up. It
suggests an alternative to the younger generation's main preoccupation:
computers. Simons says he worries about how much time kids spend online
and what this does to their experience.

'Computers
let people avoid people, going out to explore. It's so different to
just open a website instead of looking at a Picasso in a museum in
Paris. Exploring countries, people, even sexuality - it loses an aspect
of nature which I think is important... God, I sound like a teacher,
don't I? But the young kids that we cast used to talk about where
they'd been, what they'd done. Lately, they've got a lot of
information, but it's all from a computer. They're skipping so much.
They skip school. When I was young, I knew I wanted to do something
creative and run, run, run from this Catholic, mathematics, Latin,
Greek education. I was trying to find out everything about art. I
realise now that though I didn't like school, it was a good reality.
These kids don't feel what an important part of reality that is.'

Simons
doesn't just think about the heavy things, though. He enjoys talking
about pop culture, professing a current preference for 'technological'
music over bands because 'you don't get the performance and the cool
kids - it's construction and sound, and I find that more fascinating'.
He loves movies. Of course he liked the Joy Division biopic Control -
'the band has always been a big obsession' - but his favourite last
year was the serial-killer film Zodiac, which he thought was 'standout
because I didn't expect it be like that at all, not having a defined
ending, I liked that'. He smiles: 'It's funny you ask these questions,
I always ask my assistants - "What's your favourite vegetable, what's
your favourite fruit juice?" - because I think about this all the time.'

We
have a positively gossipy conversation about fashion designers and
magazines; he expresses admiration for one designer's recent weight
loss. 'He's done amazingly well,' Simons says. 'When you get to 40, you
think about these things.' And he pats his nonexistent belly ruefully.
We wait outside for taxis so that he can smoke. He has to head back to
the Jil Sander workshops and reinvent fashion. I have to catch a plane.
When my car draws up, he kisses me warmly on each cheek. 'Have a very
merry Christmas,' he says. 'And a happy New Year.' And he smiles and
waves, looking genuinely excited at the thought of the festivities to
come. The future, after all, in Raf's world is the stuff of romance and
dreams.

[sbw4224]

Re: Raf Simons: The geek who conquered the fashion world



I like the attitude behind this quote:

'I
don't mind the association with futurism,' he says, 'as long as that's
not interpreted as using an aesthetic already known as futuristic. We
like to make things modern.'

Thanks for posting this, laika, it was a great read. One of the best I've read on Raf Simons, actually.

[skot4mc]

Re: Raf Simons: The geek who conquered the fashion world

thank you laika!

[Purity]

Re: Raf Simons: The geek who conquered the fashion world

Thanks Laika! Does anyone have any pics from the Richey edwards collection by the way? What is it, 1999, 2000?

[Purity]

Re: Raf Simons: The geek who conquered the fashion world

no one?

[Faust]

Re: Raf Simons: The geek who conquered the fashion world



[quote user="Purity"]no one?[/quote]

don't know who edwards is, but you can find all Raf's collections on his website.

[matthewhk]

Re: Raf Simons: The geek who conquered the fashion world

read this yesterday but didn't comment...i always enjoy reading Raf's interviews, he has such an eloquent and simple way of phrasing things that get exactly to the point. Him and Yohji. I think they should give lessons on speaking. If only everyone (myself included) could talk like this all the time, conversation could be so much better. I do think this is a sign of incredible poise and self possession that takes a certain level of mental mastery to reach...

[Purity]

Re: Raf Simons: The geek who conquered the fashion world

Thanks faust, should've thought of that. It's aw 01, a really cool collection by the way. Richey edwards is the guitarist from Manic street preachers who disappeared about 10 years ago.