An Interview of Raf Simons

[butbeautiful]

i hope this is the right thread for this to be in.
just stumble across this and i thought it's interesting to share.


RAF SIMONS
Infinite Ingress

Raf Simons didn't enter fashion via the typical route, but then Raf Simons is not a typical fashion designer. Perhaps more than any label today, his maintains a commitment to repressed youth -- not the youthful vigor fetishized by biceps-and-pectorals labels like Gucci or Versace, but real youth, in all its awkward menace. Simons' clothes contain the psychic spark of the ignored, the revolutionary potential that builds up during the isolation of adolescence. While other designers do little more than plunder a tired series of late 20th-century youth fads, Simons alone has stayed true to his roots. True enough so that each new collection can still register revolutions in contemporary youth culture -- as well as inspire new ones.

Craig Garrett: Did you go to the fashion academy here in Antwerp?

Raf Simons: No. I studied industrial design. Can you believe that? I don't have a fashion background at all. Sometimes I hear stories like, "I was playing with my mother's dresses and blah blah blah."
I come from a white trash family. My mom went out for work when she was 15. My dad went into the army when he was 17. I was playing on a farm with cows and sheep and chickens and a lot of children, and that's it. I was in college when I was young because my mom and dad really wanted me to do something with my education, and it was Latin, Greek, mathematics -- theoretical stuff. When I was 16 or 17 I felt like I really wanted to concentrate on something more creative. But I wasn't aware that an art academy or a fashion academy existed. I was in a stupid little village. There was no culture. There was nothing.
That's why the focus for everything I do -- still -- is so much on music. Music was the only escape. You could buy it in the local record store. We had this youth club with this bus that always took us to concerts. But galleries? Never heard of them. Art institutions or art schools? Never heard of them.
I found a book in school about architecture with information about what kind of studies you can do, and in the back there was information about industrial design. At the time there were only two schools in all Belgium where you could get that education.
I visited that school and I just immediately decided, "Yes, that's what I'm going to do." It's a five-year education. In the first year you start to experiment a lot with nature and natural forms, and then it starts to develop into ergonomic things, like a handle that has to be good for your hands. And it goes further, like a radio or a car dashboard. Then at the end of the fourth and fifth years you can choose the direction you want to go. At the end I only did furniture.
In the fourth year you had to do an internship for half a year in two different places. One you could choose, which was supposed to be a design school, and the other was a hardcore industrial design place. I didn't want to go into a designer's studio actually. I really wanted to go to Walter Van Beirendonck, who was one of the Belgian designers from the first generation, you know, the "Antwerp six" (Dirk Bikkembergs, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter van Beirendonck, Dries van Noten, Dirk van Saene, and Martin Margiela). They'd just started becoming well known for what they were doing in the period I was having my education as an industrial designer. And I was really fascinated because yes, he was doing collections, but next to that he had such a strong visual appearance as a fashion designer, which was very different from anything I'd ever seen in fashion. He did a lot of things with furniture or masks -- things you cannot use -- just for the idea. I wrote to him because I wanted to do an internship in his place, but I was really scared because I wasn't coming from a fashion school. So I faked this whole portfolio, making, for example, a cover from The Face or a cover from i-D magazine, saying to Walter that this was what we had to do in school. But it was just what I did for getting into that office, fake fashion things that were very bad, I know. Then at the back I had maybe five or six projects from school, but the stupidest things, like an egg holder or something. And he was [pretends to flip quickly through pages] really not interested, and then the egg holder came [stops]. He was fascinated with the industrial design stuff.

CG: Wow. So did he take you?

RS: Yes, I had an internship with him. In the first period he made a collection named "Fashion is Dead." I'll never forget it. He made a newspaper, which was also fake: a front page with big headlines, a horoscope, perfume ads. But all this stuff had to be made, so I had to make him a perfume bottle. He was making a portrait with a mask, so I had to make the mask. We got along really well, and so after a couple months I could kind of work with him in the collection. Even if he was another generation from me, we had a really strong creative click at that time. And he took me to Paris. He had a presentation of clothes where the furniture and everything was specially done, and that's what I did. And that was also the period that some of the Antwerp scene designers, the six from Antwerp, started showing. Martin Margiela, for example, had his first and his second show there. And I saw that, and that's where the click came. Because I remember, when I saw Martin Margiela's show I was already like, "I'm wrong. I don't want to do industrial design." I suddenly started to feel that it was very isolated, industrial design. In school they were really mad with me because you were supposed to be in an industrial designer's studio. So a fashion designer? It was out of the question. They hated me for that. It was only after -- years after -- that they showed respect for it, because at that time it was like fashion [holds up right hand] and industrial design [holds up left hand]. Now we have all these crossovers suddenly. It's so much crossover it makes you sick.
Because I was choosing the Walter thing, of course they pushed me into an industrial factory. Really hardcore. I remember very well -- it was a producer of these carriers to hold 24 beers. We had to make it more ergonomic, but it was not at all about the form. It was just about the plastic, and they have to inject it into a mould. After weeks and weeks and weeks I realized, "This is not going to be the rest of my life. I don't want to do it. It's so isolated -- you just sit in front of your computer screen." I said in school that I was going there, but I wasn't going there. Every day I was taking the train to Walter's studio in Antwerp. That was like another world. It was wild. Walter's assistants were a group of five or six people my age, and he took us to the Paris or to the Venice Biennale or to Florence. Sometimes there was a presentation or a photo shoot. It was very social, which is weird because I'm not that social a person. I never go on stage, for example. I really don't like that aspect of the whole thing. I don't like public speaking. But I like social contact. I like it very much if it's more in a private situation.
And usually something clicks with the people you like. Like Larry [Clark]. He's such a normal human being. He's such a nice person. Just a very relaxed, nice person. Beecroft is maybe different [laughs]. But then in a way also not. She's an extreme personality, I find. Ten years ago I was already very interested in looks and people and fashion, and sometimes if I see someone, I'm like, "Whoah." You don't know the person, just from the look. But the first time I saw Beecroft in New York, I was nailed to the ground. She was sitting there in this fashion dress, this Comme des Garçons dress or I don't know, but sleeveless. And she has all these tattoos on the inside of her arms, these pin-ups. And I found it so strange on a person like her. To see that? It's like a trucker or something.

CG: They look like she got them in prison.

RS: And she saw that I saw them, although I didn't say anything about them. And she said something immediately like, "I was so drunk that night. And in the morning I woke up with all these trucker tattoos." [laughs]

CG: Have you ever collaborated with an artist?

RS: I did, years ago, maybe five or six years ago, one series of photographs called "Isolated Heroes" with David Sims. Actually, it's because of David Sims that I started to do my collection. I think David's photos were something totally deep. He brings in people who are not noticed by the world. For me it's a very historical approach, what he is doing. David is not thinking about which pants someone should wear to look good.
We became friends. We were speaking a lot. And what he was saying was what I was thinking, and what I was saying, he was thinking. At a certain point we made a book, although it was never published. It was never intended to do something other than just please ourselves and the people we worked with. It was also very related to an attitude -- at that time very new for the fashion world -- that had nothing to do with models. I still never work with professional models, because there is a very strong social/psychological aspect to the whole thing. I'm more interested in the language that comes out with the things I'm doing than making clothes for a hanger in the shop. I don't give a f*ck actually. If it would be about that I would already have stopped seven years ago. So I started asking people I saw in the street or people I knew already who I thought had an interesting attitude to connect with what I was doing and thinking.
And that was also David's attitude actually. For him it was more about that certain person he saw in the street, to bring that person into the area of fashion or culture magazines, more than choosing a perfect model and then putting the stuff on it, the Comme des Garçons shirt with the Yohji Yamamoto pants. When I started doing this project with him, I already had a relationship with the people we were working with for so many years. For example, there was sometimes a person we'd see in the street we'd never seen before, and we'd just ask if they would be interested to relate to what we are doing. We'd send information. They'd get in touch with us. And then we got to know each other. Usually it's a process of half a year before we really do something with them. Then, for example, they can show in Paris, but sometimes they also get involved with what we do. Like Robbie for example here? He was just a guy in the street, and we started to get in touch. And then he did a show, and then did some photos together. And now he's my manager, actually. I couldn't work without him. That process for me is the most important.
I started my thing not because I wanted to be a designer who was going to sell all over the world in the fashion stores. I just wanted to bring out some kind of language which was meant for me and my environment who didn't feel comfortable with the kind of look that we got presented. And we were interested in fashion -- we were following it -- but there was something that was missing. And that's how I started doing it. I think that's also why I started focusing on Larry [Clark]'s work so much. It's not so staged. It's real. I was in New York in February, and I rang Larry's bell. And I went up to his space, and there were seven kids. They were just sitting there and helping him. It's bringing you back to where you come from and how you were yourself. And it's probably also related to not wanting to age. But it's still also an investigation into what it is and how it is.

CG: Do you think your involvement in contemporary art has had an influence on how you design your label?

RS: I just want to keep it away from this typical structured fashion world, which is very defined. In the early beginning I booked some models once, and after the show they were saying things to me, and it was like they were aliens. They loved it! They were all slimy, you know? It's very good for your ego, if you're looking for that. I work with guys from the street, and their approach to what we are doing is so different -- but for me very interesting. Because at the end I am also concentrating on a language that is meant for a certain generation, and their response gives you a lot of energy. So the whole thing is structured very differently. I take a pair of pants and they just give me a critique on the pants. Sometimes they love it, but sometimes it's like, "Ha, I'm not going to wear that!" And I don't make them wear it, because it makes no sense to me, because they're not at all going to represent an attitude that I want. It's also very fascinating for me to find out why yes or why not, and how they feel about it. It's something I could talk for hours about.
Some guys we cast already five or six years ago, when they were only fifteen. The way they looked was street and baggy, and that's what they wanted to represent. Now years later, when they've had an education and they've started to have jobs, suddenly they start thinking over their whole look and their what they want to represent. So they start thinking over things that they used to critique when they came here in the beginning. Like a suit, for example. Now they call me and say and say, "Do you maybe have a suit that's small in the shoulder?" And that's really interesting for me. That makes it worth doing the things.
For Paris we are very structured like that. We have our own cast, and we bring them over by buses. It's a very social thing also because we don't just pick up a guy from fifteen on the street and say, "Come, let's do a video." It doesn't work like that -- definitely in Belgium that's a very scary thing. So we get in touch with people, and we give them a card, and then they get in touch. And then we send a bunch of materials about what we are doing, and if they are attracted they come here. Their parents come here and their sisters and their brothers come here. Sometimes we have all a whole bus that goes to Paris with one guy and like five family members with him. People sometimes say, "You're crazy to do this. It's more work actually." With a model agency one week before the show you just call them with these stupid fiches.


via http://www.papercoffin.com/writing/articles/simons.html

hope this isn't a repost!

 

[iyemstoopid]

interesting.. thanks!

 

[Flashbang]

BUMP

Raf Simons: Fashion Should Be “Hard To Grasp, Hard To Find”
June 15, 2010 1:32 pm

Pitti Uomo kicks off in Florence tomorrow, and the headliner this time around is Raf Simons (left), who unveils his Spring ‘11 menswear collection for Jil Sander on Thursday night. The timing isn’t entirely coincidental: Simons brings Sander to Pitti as he marks five years as the brand’s creative director, and he says he sees the excursion to Florence as a fitting celebration of his work, as he puts it, to “free Jil from itself.” “I believe in the Jil Sander heritage, but the brand can’t always be about double-face cashmere and a white shirt,” Simons says. And since he’s taken the reins, it hasn’t been. Marbled suiting. Half-length blazers. The pieces, in stores now, printed with the artwork of Tsuguharu Foujita. Jil Sander will be a far different thing after Simons’ tenure, and that, Simons says, is the point. “When someone else comes to do this job, there should be more possible than there was before,” he asserts. “Not that I’m planning on going anywhere.” Below, Simons talks to Style.com about the influence of nature, the changing designer customer, and taking stock at the five-year mark.

The Jil Sander show is a cornerstone of Milan’s menswear fashion week. Did you have any concerns about relocating the show to Florence this season?
No, no, quite the opposite. It felt right, after five years, to do something different. And separate. People are coming specially; they’re not turning up for our show and then running off to the next one. It’s a whole event. We’re bringing people to an estate in the hills, showing outside in a tremendous garden with a view of the city below. Afterwards, there will be a dinner. We are creating an atmosphere of celebration—the people at Pitti are very good at that. And it was the right moment. Next season, back to Milan.

You must have known you’d be showing Spring ‘11 at Pitti before you started designing the collection. Did the anticipation of a change in location have any effect on the clothes?
In fact, that’s another, very important reason why I thought it would be good to come to Pitti, because I was curious to see how it would influence me.

So? How did it?
Well, as I said, we are showing in a garden, and so first of all, I was thinking about what it meant to be in nature. Not to say this is an “eco” collection, but you know, Milan can be quite sterile, and our shows in Milan, they’re very clean and quite intimate. Nature has a different scale. To be in dialogue with nature, you have to contend with that scale in some way. I was asking myself, how does the human body relate to this space?

I suppose the obvious way to answer that question is to do something dramatic with the silhouette.
This isn’t a silhouette-driven collection at all, as a matter of fact. I don’t want to compete with nature; I also don’t want to blend in. What I want is to create a tension, a certain friction or electricity, and show something you wouldn’t expect in that environment. The collection is quite uncomplicated. It’s very much about color and about material, which is the heritage of Jil. I wanted to go back to the roots. No spectacle. No over-the-top form—more simple and easy to relate to. The color and the material are more challenging. But I’ve probably already said more than I should.

I imagine that the five-year anniversary has occasioned some reflection on the brand. Has your sense of Jil Sander evolved over the years?
My perspective has changed and it hasn’t. What I’ve been conscious of, from the beginning, is that I can’t be Jil Sander. There was—and is—an audience for this brand that wants the Jil that she created, but it’s my job to make them think, to see new ideas, to feed their brains. There won’t always be a good reaction, but that’s not the point. You have to open things up, give lots of directions. That can be a challenge, with a brand like Jil Sander, because it’s always been linked to a certain kind of realism. And it emerged at a time when fashion evolved more slowly than it does now. I really respect the heritage—I’m here because I connect to it, profoundly. I feel it’s my responsibility, no matter what we take as an inspiration or a direction each season, that there’s always a quality you recognize as Jil Sander. But if you keep showing the things you found beautiful in the nineties, you’ll get bored. Even if you still find those things beautiful. And eventually, the audience will get bored, too. That’s the trouble you run into when you give up as a designer and let the audience define the brand.

I’m intrigued by what you just said about Jil Sander emerging at a time when fashion was allowed to evolve more slowly than it does now. I take it that you feel like, not only have you changed Jil Sander, but that the brand’s audience has changed, and that it was going to with or without you.
There will always be a Jil Sander client who wants a good cashmere coat and a simple, flat shoe, and we offer that. But fashion in the past decade has gone in so many directions, there is so much diversity now, that in general the consuming psychology has changed. It’s hard to surprise anymore. And also, there’s not the loyalty there was. In the nineties it was common to see people who expressed themselves through one designer—the Jil Sander woman, the Martin Margiela woman. You saw her on the street and you knew who she was. I bring up women because the change has been most dramatic for women, but it’s true of men, too—consumers are more likely now to buy a mix. They want more change. They want more of everything. I’m not complaining—I’m from a generation that believes in this mix. But Jil Sander, as a brand, is in an interesting position, not only because it’s founded on this realism, as I said, but also because it’s not a brand that makes its turnover on bags and shoes. We really have to sell the clothes. We can’t put things on the runway just to entertain people.

In other words, do you see the consumer mentality beginning to shift again, in light of the recession?
Maybe it’s the economy, maybe it’s just time for another shift, but yes, I’m beginning to sense a new approach. For example, we’ve seen that our stores are doing better than they ever have. There could be many reasons for that, but perhaps it has to do with a customer who is committing again to one brand. We’ll see. I can see how it would get exhausting, feeling like you have to buy 16 bags by 16 different designers every year, in order to keep up.

Does the possibility of a shift like that excite you or frighten you?
I’d like to see fashion slow down a bit. What freaks me out about fashion today is the speed—the speed of consuming, the speed of ideas. When fashion moves so fast, it takes away something I always loved, which is the idea that fashion should be slightly elusive. Hard to grasp, hard to find. We say this word, elite, like it’s bad to be elite, but is it? Shouldn’t there be some things, fashion included, that you can enjoy as creativity, as a message that requires thinking over? I’d like there to be time for that again. I mean, in the end the consumer will decide. We can only suggest. That’s their freedom. But I know for myself, it’s like, for the past eight years, I’ve been collecting art. And I follow the artists I care about; I don’t buy one piece by every artist. I know there are people who do that, but I can’t express myself that way. My point of view is that if I love a certain kind of beauty, I want more of that beauty. I don’t need 200 different beauties.

Do you have any particular favorite collections you’ve designed for Jil Sander? Any standout moments?
I always say, the best are the first and the last. I’m an emotional person, and of course the first collection for Jil made a big impression on me. I had no idea how people would react; our strategy, as a team, was to go in modest. The brand had been turbulent for many years, and our goal was simply to stabilize it. And then as time went on, we would make more of a statement. But the reaction to the first collection was so amazing, it kind of destroyed our strategy of being modest. And of course that first collection was also memorable because it scared the **** out of me to design women’s clothes. So that will always be a favorite season, and then there are also collections, like the African show, that I feel are important. That African show—that was the first one where I told the team, let’s go every place this brand has never been. Go to the past, go to exotic places, do fringe. It was a risk, but it was the season when I really said to myself, yes, we have the right to go wherever we want to go. But the collection that is always my favorite is the last. Actually, what I really mean is not the last, I mean the next. The task of the designer is to be excited about what’s to come. I’m a romantic about the future. That’s where all the possibility is. —Maya Singer

style.com

 

[softgrey]

bump again...

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  Photo by Willy Vanderperre/Art Partner

Raf Simons: “The process never stops”

April 24, 2013
Mr. Simons, would you consider yourself someone that lives and breathes fashion?

How can I put this without being too critical? I don’t have so many things in the fashion world that interest me. It’s probably because I am so deeply into it. Often when you go very deep into something, you also discover what it’s about and you understand it better. With the art world I still have a lot of curiosity. There are a lot of things that I feel attracted to and I don’t necessarily understand them and that’s what fascinates me. In the fashion world I know a lot of the brands and the designers and you start to be more critical and you start to have a very specific point of view.
But isn’t fashion such a significant part of your life?
The fashion thing is something I do, and yes it is definitely also becoming a part of myself and my personality. It also doesn’t really feel like a job either: it’s a dream or a passion or something. I think there are things that I relate to more than fashion though, personal, private things. Like my environment, my family, my friends, you know.

I’ve read that the first fashion show you ever went to was Maison Martin Margiela. You said it was so beautiful that half the audience cried and it had a huge influence on you. Why?

Because that was the day that I understood that fashion could also be conceptual and intellectual, that it could be linked to a certain kind of social, psychological thing. That Martin Margiela show was in a really trashy area in Paris and it wasn’t in a building, it was in a playground from a black neighborhood. The parents had agreed to do the show for the Margiela company only if their children could come and see it. Everybody was expecting the children to just stay on the side and sit with the audience, but they didn’t.
What happened?

They started to play with the girls and it was a very, very different thing. Before my perception of fashion was a high-staged Americano, you know like sun tans, boys, healthy. Martin was turning it completely around; it was like they came out of a grave or something. They looked really different. I don’t have that background; my parents are very working-class and I come from a village where there is no culture.
How did you find your creativity in such a place?

One of the first things I picked up when I was very, very young out of a record store was work from Peter Saville, the early things he used to do for Factory Records. I come from a village of 6,000 people, so forget about Berlin, London, New York – what are you talking about? – I didn’t know anything. So I picked up things because of the imagery. We have to think back in time – no computers, no mobiles, no nothing – it was pure isolation in a way.
You never traveled when you were younger?

No traveling, never went on a holiday. My life was literally my street. And I picked up records because when you’re young, you’re into the bands. And what were the bands back in the day? The Cure, Anne Clarke, and all the new wave things. And then suddenly there were these things from New Order, Power, Corruption, and Lies with the flowers and the wreath. I was like, “What is that?”
Is that how you became interested in fashion?

No. I was in a college, you know, with priests teaching. We were not informed about what was possible. Until I was eighteen I did not know that you could study fashion design or art. I really didn’t know. I already had my nose in the art world, I was already looking at things, but I didn’t really get it that you could study that because my school was a very different environment. It was the kind of school where they want you to become a doctor or a lawyer and that’s not at all what my personality is.
How did you manage to get out of that?

I got this book from these people who would come to the class once or twice a year to show you what the possibilities to go and study are. In the back of the book there was a half page on architecture and a half page on industrial design. I looked at the address of the industrial design school and it wasn’t too far from my parents’ house – I could get there with a bus – so I thought I’d go and have a look. I walked through the door and I thought, “This is what I’m going to do.” I saw all these kids sitting there, with cigarettes, it looked like such a different world.
But that was industrial design, how did you end up in fashion?

Within the first months at that school I realized everything that was possible – going to an art school, going to a fashion school – and it was in that period that the Belgian designers started to shape up and I was very attracted to that. There was a Belgian fashion designer named Walter Van Beirendonck and I saw that the way he was handling fashion was not just by making clothes, he was also doing presentations and masks and furniture. I was so modest to think that I wouldn’t be welcomed in fashion because I was in design school, but I thought maybe I should just write a letter to see if he had an interest in letting me work for them and that worked out. He’s actually the one who took me to Paris to that Martin Margiela show we were talking about earlier.
It’s interesting because it feels like this combination of different but related art fields was always very present in your career and in your interests.

Yeah.
How do you deal with your star status in the fashion industry?
It’s not that much in my interest. It’s actually something that I’ve found quite complicated for a while. I’ve always kind of tried to split it up, but that is becoming more and more difficult because I’m attracted to do things that have this constant dialogue with an audience and it seems to keep growing. Which is a good feeling because that means that people want to have that dialogue with me or the things I do. So it is kind of fascinating, but the idea of fame just for fame’s sake is something that I actually hate.

How important is the Internet in that dialogue with your audience?

That’s the question that is in my head a lot lately. I don’t really know about the long run. It’s clearly quite important right now – it’s so much a tool from this moment and from this generation – but what were the tools when I was young? The tools were television and magazines or a normal telephone in the house and now twenty years later those are all gone. So I’m just trying to imagine if this computer thing and the Internet thing might be gone in twenty years. It’s an important tool in this moment, but I’m still somebody who believes that a real-life experience makes a difference. I know a lot of young kids whose world is literally their sixteen square meter room and their computer. With all respect, and yes I embrace the young generation’s approach, but you miss a lot that way.
An actual encounter with an art piece or a fashion show is significantly different than seeing it on a screen.
Exactly. The dimensions, the light, everything is different. Looking at and experiencing a movie in a theater or a performance on stage and being there and feeling the vibe and also feeling the other people’s vibes – it’s a very different thing. It’s one hundred percent the opposite of what we embrace so much as the new communication. But it’s important because it’s what the young kids embrace very, very much. Still, I think if it was only that, it could mean that it will disappear really fast. At the end of the day we are animals; it’s very animalistic in a way. We like to have contact.

Talking about the new generation, you used to teach fashion in Vienna. Do you think it’s possible to teach someone to do what you do?


That’s a good question. I think it partly can’t be taught, because I think teaching is not just learning to make a pattern or learning to sew a skirt or whatever. Teaching is also having a dialogue with somebody in order to teach the person to create a thought process. I do find a lot of people who have an interesting, individual, unique, meaningful thought process, but then comes the moment that the thought process, which is very abstract, has to be translated or brought to an actual thing, to a materialization. That’s where a lot of them have difficulties.
What is your thought process like? Let’s imagine you’re stuck with an idea and you don’t know where to go with your designs for a new collection…
Then I stop fashion, that’s not possible. That’s the day that I die!
But I’m sure you get stuck every now and then.
No, for me it’s the opposite. I have to find ways to stop the thought process because the thought process is constant; it’s constantly everywhere. And that’s not to make me sound pretentious, because it sometimes makes me unhappy. It can keep you awake or you have it in the middle of a meeting.
Does that affect the people around you?

It sometimes makes people nervous. I’m doing things and at the same time thinking about something else and they are responsible for working things out from the thing that I said before and I’m already saying something else. They would say, “Calm down! First this.” It’s a flow. I’m not somebody who has to sit at a desk and think over what I have to do. I know for myself that the day I’m stuck for an idea is the day that it has to stop; that’s the day that I know it’s not going to work anymore. So for me it’s the opposite: I have to find ways to stop my creative thought process.
What are some of those ways?
I go to the art world and I look at all the people’s work and I’m so fascinated with the work because it takes me away from my fashion thing. That’s also probably why I keep doing several things all the time – because the thought process never stops.

thetalks.com

 

[glamrockgal]

great inspiration to read.thank you for sharing.

 

[Bernadette]

An old interview:

The Rise of Raf

Dior’s newly appointed artistic director, Raf Simons met ELLE’s Rebecca Lowthorpe in 2009. How did a self-taught designer who had never cut a dress in his life become fashion's most sought after talent?

I meet Raf Simons in Coin, the garish neon-lit department store in downtown Milan. It’s a peculiar place to meet one of the fashion world’s most influential designers. Needless to say his creations are not stocked here. As I make my way up to the top floor and out onto the chilly roof terrace with only a plastic canopy for cover, the reason for this particular location soon becomes clear. In the corner, a seating arrangement is marked with a ‘Riservato’ sign and a table dotted with five ashtrays. I am about to watch Raf Simons consume a pack of cigarettes in two and a half hours. ‘I started smoking when I split up from Veronique… I had a broken heart,’ he explains of his former girlfriend, the Belgian designer Veronique Branquinho, who he dated for five years at the beginning of his career. This is quite a confession – not the loss of a love that caused him to smoke like a chimney but the fact the love is a ‘she’. It’s not often one gets to meet a heterosexual fashion designer, or at least one who will admit to it. Although later when I ask him to clarify – ‘Does he have a girlfriend at the moment, or a boyfriend, maybe?’ – he just blushes and swerves the question with a ‘Noo no, no, noooo.’

Three things make this Belgian designer remarkable. First, he is probably the most important menswear designer of the past 15 years, credited with jump-starting the punky deconstructed uniform so prevalent among today’s urban youth – skinny black suits cut small in the shoulders, the ubiquitous hoodie, the baggy-and-layered look. He shows his menswear in Paris, often in huge cavernous venues or wide-open city spaces, and instead of using agency models, he prefers to cast waif-like teenagers off the streets of Antwerp – some have walked for him for 10 years or more. He is known for celebrating the beauty in the ordinary, so there’s a cool, gritty reality to Simons and his brand – an image that has long since infiltrated high-street chains like Topman and influenced celebrated fashion photographers like David Sims (with whom he collaborated on a book of portraits, Isolated Heroes).

The second remarkable thing is since 2005, he has had creative control of Jil Sander, the cult womenswear label revered as much for its cutting-edge vision as for its unapologetically minimal tailoring. To have to follow in the footsteps of a legend such as Jil Sander is one thing, but to have to follow in those footsteps without ever having designed a dress before is quite astonishing. ‘I was very scared indeed,’ he says, sucking in a ring of smoke. ‘It wasn’t just stepping into her shoes – it was designing womenswear for the first time. She was so respected, really, really respected, that I didn’t think people would give me a chance.’ When he took over, the label’s credibility was on the slide, having been designed by a rudderless design team for three seasons following Sander’s acrimonious departure. She had left the company she had founded, for the second time at the end of 2004, citing irreconcilable differences with her new boss, Patrizio Bertelli, the husband of Miuccia Prada and CEO of the Prada Group, which had bought Sander’s company in 1999. The fashion world was aghast at her departure – store buyers in particular reeled at the news.

‘When Raf’s name came up, I thought, “Oh god, here we go”,’ says the legendary Joan Burstein, owner of designer emporium Browns and loyal devotee of Sander’s from the beginning. ‘But he was clever. He started out by respecting the label and he gained the respect of the buyers and customers. And now he’s freed himself from the Jil Sander reigns – he’s more expressive. His whole vision, how he sees a woman, it’s beautiful.’ The spring/summer 2009 collection, pictured here – the most romantic of cutting-edge clothes where silken fringes swathe everything from jackets to body-contouring dresses – was widely regarded by editors and buyers as one of the top shows of the season.

And the third remarkable thing? He has had no formal training in fashion design – not even so much as a single lesson in pattern cutting, which makes his accomplishments all the more extraordinary.

So how did he do it? How on earth did this quiet man, now 41 – today dressed surprisingly like a Milanese City banker in head-to-toe black Jil Sander cashmere – scale the heights of fashion without us ever really getting to know him? This is a designer who wants to fly under the radar. The fact you might not have heard of him is precisely how he likes it. He would rather remain anonymous to the world he influences than give endless interviews. Indeed, this interview had to be rescheduled three times.

To understand what makes him tick, you need to understand his… Belgian-ness. Imagine for a minute all the fashion nations reduced to caricatures: you’d have the Americans representing feel-good uncomplicated clothes, the Italians as flamboyant and sexy, the French impeccably chic, the Brits as creative eccentrics, the Japanese as avant-garde conceptualists. And the Belgians? They’d be fashion’s dark Goths – cool, experimental, serious. I should say here, however, that Simons’ intimidatingly cool image doesn’t match the man. In person he’s warm, gentle and forthright.

I ask Simons what it means to him to be a Belgian designer? ‘That, I don’t know. I think you should tell me because they always ask me this and everybody thinks it’s a group of designers and it’s not,’ he says. One thing is for sure: Belgian designers don’t like to be grouped. The first generation of famous designers to come out of Belgium in the early 1980s – a decade before Simons started – were known collectively as ‘The Antwerp Six’ and included Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester and briefly Martin Margiela – all of whom at the time, it seems, resented being lumped together instead of being allowed to shine individually. ‘I think with the first generation it all got very tense. At least, what I know from Martin is he had the desire to be on his own, he couldn’t have that kind of group thing going on.’ Simons wonders if the strong image that binds ‘The Belgians’ is down to the fact they all spent so long in the same place: Antwerp. ‘It’s more like a village, it’s very small, very non glamorous… everybody is just very isolated. Sometimes you run into each other but it’s at the bakery, not a party. You present yourself through your work.’

Simons grew up in Neerpelt, a small town close to the border of Holland. ‘I’m not growing up with culture there, eh? I am actually brought up between cows and sheep.’ An only child, he was sent to the local Catholic school, which he describes as ‘uncreative and uninspiring’, but he decided to make the most of it for the sake of his parents. ‘They were both from very big families of nine or ten children with absolutely no possibilities,’ he says of his father, who joined the army at 16, and his mother, who worked as a cleaning lady. ‘The only thing they ever said to me was, just take it serious your school.’

By the age of 17, Simons had developed a taste for avant-garde post-punk music, buying up Joy Division, New Order and Kraftwerk records from his local music shop, but he knew nothing of fashion or art school. He resisted his teachers’ efforts to steer him in the sensible direction of law or medicine and instead decided to go off and study industrial design in Genk. ‘For the first time I saw all these kids, how they were dressed, how they acted and performed, so easy and so completely not like at my school. Everywhere they were making things, it was so creative.’ He studied there for four years during which time he designed door handles, a bicycle for a handicapped child, furniture and car designs.

It was during his third year when, having become friendly with fashion students at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, he decided he’d like to do an internship with Walter Van Beirendonck (one of the original Antwerp Six). Being an industrial-design student, Simons was so worried the fashion designer wouldn’t want him, he made up a fake fashion portfolio. ‘He flicked through it really fast, like he wasn’t interested, but then at the end he noticed, stuffed in the back of the portfolio, my real work from college – it was an eggcup design… That’s how I ended up making things for him, like a perfume bottle, or a mask or furniture for his presentations.’

Van Beirendonck showed his collections in Paris and took Simons with him to help out. ‘He took me to the first fashion shows I ever saw in my life,’ he says. These included a Jean Paul Gaultier show that had models rising up through the floor on revolving turntables and a Martin Margiela show that took place in a poor immigrant neighbourhood of Paris with local children dancing down the improvised catwalk. ‘That was the moment I perceived fashion in a different way,’ he says.

Later that year, he graduated from his industrial-design course with furniture inspired by the human body. Still, Simons didn’t jump straight into fashion design. It was two years (working as a furniture designer) before he took a small collection along to Linda Loppa, the then-head of the fashion department at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts (the Belgian equivalent of London’s Central Saint Martins) who was so impressed with Simons’ first attempts at menswear that she not only put him in contact with her father (a brilliant tailor) but also sent him off to Italy to get a manufacturer. ‘I didn’t say anything to my family about it… My father wears a pacemaker. He’s a healthy boy, eh? But also a very traditional man. He didn’t know what is fashion… Of course, now, they are very proud.’

It has started to snow on the roof terrace and the Jil Sander PRs are trying to prize Simons away back to the design studio, but he wants to smoke another cigarette, so I ask him, ‘Can you tell me about the biggest passions in your life?’ First, he talks about his love of art and the fact that if he wasn’t a designer, he’d be a curator or art buyer. ‘You know, I really like to see art and buy art.’ Does that mean he’s very rich? ‘Well, ja, it’s not cheap. But I never save money, eh? I spend every penny on art.’ He owns work by the sculptor Steven Gontarski and Don Brown, painters Dana Schutz and Daniel Sinsel and the last thing he bought was a piece by Evan Holloway.

The conversation leads to the Art Basel art fair and a chance encounter with Jil Sander. ‘Please,’ he says, leaning in, ‘I ask you to be careful how you write it because it’s a very weird situation.’ He goes on to explain: ‘She saw me and I saw her and it was a little bit this uncomfortable situation, like, what should we do now? So I thought I would be a gentleman, I went over and shook hands.’ He is at pains to be as diplomatic as possible. ‘I feel very sensitive towards her because I know, if the same thing happened to me, if it were my name, my brand…’ he trails off. I wonder, if he was in her situation, who he would choose to follow in his footsteps? ‘Nicolas Ghesquière (the creative director at Balenciaga). He’s the only one I would put on my brand… Or maybe Miuccia (Prada) would be interesting.’

Back to his passions. Who does he care about most in the world? ‘My mum, my dad… and Robbie,’ he says, describing the much-tattooed young man who used to be the face of Raf Simons and now runs his studio in Antwerp. ‘Robbie is a brother to me… he is my blood. If he said to me, “I can’t stay anymore”, I’m out. I stop everything. I can’t be in fashion without him.’ He says this so passionately, it’s easy to see how people might confuse his sexuality.

And fashion design – is this a true passion? ‘Well, it’s true, it takes away all your private life… it takes away your private time, you know? Fashion doesn’t know the word stop… but at the same time it’s so attracting, so strong, it’s just so fascinating.’

Source: elleuk.com