For the last year films about designers and fashion designers became especially popular: several biopics about Yves Saint Laurent, films about Valentino and Coco Chanel were released. On March 5, another film about the world of fashion is released. The documentary "Dior and Me" follows the process of creating Raf Simons' first couture collection for Dior, immediately after his appointment as creative director of the brand. The Belgian was given eight weeks to create the collection. Raf Simons is undoubtedly one of the main designers of our time: a singer of minimalism and youth subcultures, he is the creative director of one of the main fashion houses of Dior, while creating successful men's collections for his own brand Raf Simons. On the eve of the premiere of the film, we tell the main facts about the forty-seven-year-old Belgian in order to go to the cinema savvy.
1
In college, Raf Simons studied industrial design and furniture design in Genk, Belgium and was a professional in this business: he created interior items for small galleries of contemporary art. In 2014, he “went back to basics” and developed a collection of furniture and textiles together with the Danish company Kvadrat. The minimalist and colorful collection was shown at Milan Design Week and received many positive reviews.
2
The entire fashion world should be grateful to Walter van Beirendonck: it was thanks to him that Raf Simons became a fashion designer. From 1991 to 1993, Raf was an intern in the design studio of one of the craziest (in a good way) members of the Antwerp Six. Walter once took Raf with him to Paris Fashion Week, and the first runway he saw for Simons was the all-white Maison Martin Margiela show. It was this show that became decisive and pushed him to seriously engage in clothing design. The second main source of inspiration for Raf was Helmut Lang.
3
Raf Simons founded his own menswear brand in 1995 and continues to create collections to this day, inspired by street culture and rebellious youth aesthetics. He was one of the first designers to bring street style elements to Paris catwalks. One of the strongest collections - spring-summer - 2002, which is called "Woe Onto Those Who Spit on the Fear Generation … The Wind Will Blow It Back". Models in balaclavas, all-white and red bows and T-shirts with slogans walked barefoot through the halls of Lycée Stanislas with torches in their hands - all this in 2001!
4
When Raf launched his signature clothing label in 1995, he didn’t put on shows, limiting himself to small presentations or video screenings. The first show, which took place in Paris, for Raf was the spring-summer season - 1997. Then he showed images inspired by American colleges, punk culture and new wave. In 1999, he staged a show manifesto. Models walked the runway holding black posters that read “Isolation,” “Incubation,” as well as the names of soldiers killed in World War II.
5
Raf Simons until 2006 named each collection of his own line, and they are all admirable: "Disorder, Incubation, Isolation", "Black Palms", "Radioactivity", "How to Talk to Your Teen", "We Only Come Out at Night”,“Kinetic Youth”,“Riot Riot Riot”,“Virginia Creeper”,“May the Circle Be Unbroken”,“Icarus Surgit”- sounds like the names of cool films that you want to watch right now.
6
2005 can be called one of the most important periods in the career of a designer - it became a key one. This year, Raf was appointed creative director of Jil Sander, the release of his own book (in honor of the tenth anniversary of the brand name) and the launch of the second line of his Raf by Raf Simons brand. It's worth noting that designers only launch second lines when things are going particularly well. A year of success. In the same year, Raf presented the first retrospective of his work at the men's exhibition Pitti Uomo in Florence. The Belgian at that time was 38 years old.
7
Raf Simons is extremely successful in collaborations. One of the first was the collaboration with Fred Perry in 2008. His adidas sneakers are in the wishlist or in the wardrobe of every second fashionista. Raf combined futuristic design and sneaker culture and got it right. Previously, the Belgian created joint collections with ASICS, Eastpak and Linda Farrow, and last year he went further and created a ready-to-wear collection with the famous American artist Sterling Ruby. Pants, shirts and coats, smeared with paint, immediately became a cult: this season, KTZ almost exactly copied the design of the jacket and trousers - one of the signs of total success.
8
The highlight of Raf Simons' fashion biography is undoubtedly the appointment as Creative Director of Dior in April 2012. After the dismissal of John Galliano, there were a lot of rumors about the appointment: would it be Ricardo Tisci, Tom Ford, Edie Slimane or Nicolas Ghesquière. Raf Simons was appointed eight weeks before the show of the couture collection, which is usually created in eight months - this is the process that will tell the film "Dior and Me". The main thing that Raf did in the Dior collections: he left the form, removed all unnecessary details and added more technological materials, preserving the feminine spirit of the house and the ideas of Christian Dior.
9
Music on the show is extremely important for Raf. Coincidence or not, the release date for The Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness coincided with Raf's first collection in 1995, and his first show was based on the song “Tonight, Tonight” from that album. Since then, at the shows of Raf, Kraftwerk (the band's musicians entered the show of the "radioactive" collection as models in 1998), then Sonic Youth (during the Dior couture show) have been heard. In addition, Raph's early collections were greatly influenced by the style of musicians from Ian Curtis to Richie Edwards. However, the Belgian himself remains a loyal fan of Beethoven, Plastikman and The xx.
10
Kanye West and his stylist Virgil Abloh are big fans of Raf Simons. In 2008, Kanye even interviewed the Belgian for Interview Magazine. Unsurprisingly, critics saw a lot of plagiarism in Kanye West's collection for adidas. Virgil borrowed the idea of drawings and prints on military items for his brand from the collection of Raf Simons in 2003, on which the designer worked with British artist Peter Savill. The 2003 collection itself was dedicated to the intersection points between infantile clothes, poor neighborhood clothing and formal business style. It seems like all this Kanye and Virgil are still trying to combine.