Of course, it was as fraught an occasion as there could possibly be in fashion: Raf Simons’s first reappearance in public, less than one month since his fans had been hit by the body blow of his exit from Calvin Klein. The specter that sudden severance of a lauded major designer raised was more general. Does it herald the death, or at least the belittling, of creativity and meaning in fashion? Simons had a tangential answer to that. “I don’t want to be negative,” he said. “I want to do something abstract and beautiful and elegant and proud and sophisticated, but without losing the edge of what the brand stands for: the young generation, the dark movies.”
Well, he delivered on that, in a show dominated by dramatically long silhouettes—they’d be called maxi coats on a woman—which came freighted with all the kinds of messages Simons’s cult followers find gratifying to decode. Burning down the house was a printed slogan that flashed by on one of the knee patches on the white cotton trousers that accompanied everything.
That, one could suspect, might have been slipped in during the last couple of weeks, but Simons claimed to have finished the collection “before Christmas, before the hassle started.” It certainly felt as if it had continued where his last collection—which had terrific renderings of couture-like satin coats—left off, but this time in a more extended and concentrated way, exploring elongated volumes or pushed-out David Byrne shoulders in classic menswear fabrics. Simons’s headgear typically threw it well off-normal: an almost indescribable construct of jockey hat, umbrella, and backward baseball cap. Or maybe a conceptual crash helmet for fashion’s runners and riders?
This time, Simons’s chosen surrounding wasn’t a dark old club dive in a Paris suburb, but the gilded rooms of the Shangri-La Hotel—and the club came to the hotel. Simons had invited the Whispering Sons, a young Belgian post-punk band whose web page describes how their music “unveils feelings of alienation, propelled by an urging and ominous sound.” The designer had been thrilled to discover that they’re “from northeast Belgium, next to where my parents still live.” So they performed, and then there was part two of the show, a more-or-less repeat of the first, only this time in pastels and bright colors.
There was much else to unpack: principally, the patched photographic prints—the typical Raf Simons design tic—which this time displayed stills from David Lynch movies. Laura Dern, who has become a friend, had helped him gain usage permission.
Simons was wearing an oversize sweater collaged with two Blue Velvet photos of Dern screaming and crying into a phone as he conducted interviews after the show. Perhaps she was acting as his talisman, because he didn’t cry himself (he has often been emotional backstage), and clearly head-on grilling about the Calvin Klein debacle was off-limits. But one general observation arose about the state of affairs out there. “I’m fascinated with what’s going to come,” he said.
“I think the basis of everything is causing trouble, but at the same time I don’t want to sound negative, because I feel like it’s so interesting to think of what could now shape up—for everyone,” he continued. As for him personally? He said that the outpouring of feeling from fans and supporters over the past few weeks was something that “makes me very proud and happy. You start to think about how scale starts to become completely irrelevant. The size of something. The size of a company. Big or small. It’s not really what makes me happy anymore.”
What now? “It’s been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to pull back,” he reflected. “I’m more fascinated to see how I’m going to deal with that, and what is going to come next.”
