this collection is so obnoxious it made me login into my account after YEARS just to vent and rant lmfao
i used to appreciate raf's design language, some of his collections from the dior era are absolutely beautiful, especially when he blended historical garments with dior's extreme femininity and romanticism sprinkled with his graphic/gritty/street influences.... but i digress lol those days are long GONE.
when im watching a collection sometimes a movie and/or a director will pop in my head, in this case the colours, mood and some of the shapes at first glance reminded me of Aki Kaurismäki's pictures, and i couldn't help but trace one or two parallels between the monstruosity shown here and Aki's AMAZING filmography.
even tho some of the colours and shapes are somewhat similar (a satured red or pastel element drowning in a mostly gloomy muted palette with very rigid, sharp and boxy shapes) what Raf fails to do is inject some humor, warmth and humanity in his designs, everything is so sterile, obnoxious and pretentious. On the opposite side, despite being rigorous and minimal to the point of almost being barren, Aki is able to make something alive, creative, humorous (albeit very deadpan) and HUMAN.
as the video progressed and more of the collection was shown, the similarities between the work of these two men barely remained on the shapes/colours and almost vanished lol. raf's work is tepid at best, he's so far up his *** and views himself as this great intelectual but is completely incapable of designing a desirable denim look despite having CK in his resume (as mentioned by someone above), its baffling and revolting. his eye for colour and proportion is getting worse, the thought of him trying to imbue some cerebral meaning to the goofy, unflattering, ridiculous tailoring with a ghastly colour pallette shown here makes me completely mental.
dont even get me started on the shoes, he's co-helming prada but cant make a decent sexy pair of MATURE footwear, its just bonkers how useless he is. speaking of maturity, the fashion industry as whole is guilty with being youth obsessed and blah blah, but RAF?? he just reeks of middle crisis, a 50 year old men trying to revive and cling to his """"glorious""""" teenage years of partying in a shody proto techno club in Berlin or Antwerp, his vision of what is cool and young is so passé and cringe (hedi is guilty of this too, but at least he has a finger on the pulse of todays youth culture, for better or for worse).
none of this feels new, it all feels dead, cold and stupid but what makes everything even worse is the pretentiousness of it all lol if he wasnt so pompous and full of self adulation his collections would be bearable. speaking on the positive-ish: he has a very recognizable and particular POV, but in all fairness idk if this warrants praise lol. this forum loves to drag MGC (which is justified tbh), at least she's a capable business woman and decent storyteller, sure her clothes are meh and uninspiring but at least they look good in person and are honest propositions despite the gimmicks, the same thing cant be said about prada nowadays, recently i saw a guy in person wearing raf's designs head to toe and it looked so BAD and shoddy mind you, he was a very tall, skinny individual with model proportions, if even the model types look objectively bad in his clothes i cant even begin to imagine what this would look like on the average customer.
perhaps i shouldn't have compared Raf to Aki's complex œuvre, he's more like emerald fennel's saltburn a vapid self aggrandising farce that only appeals and seems intelectual to clueless people with poor cultural capital and vast financial resources.
end rant lmfao sorry
