Raf Simons

LONDON — Antwerp’s ModeMuseum, MoMu, is gearing up for a big September reopening and preparing to feed the appetites of the fashion community with creative dialogue, refreshed visions — and a reset. To mark the event, the museum will hold three fashion exhibitions under the theme of “Fashion 2.021 Antwerp...

When the space-cowboy-approved Raf Simons Cylon-21 dropped earlier this month, I had flashbacks to 2013, when Simons and adidas launched their collaborative take on the underrated ’90s Ozweego. Just like the Cylon-21 today, the Ozweego was sitting on shelves and eventually even found its way to the sale section. The...

As the lights went up on Raf Simons’ show yesterday, it was his encyclopaedic knowledge of film history that shone through first. There were the computer units straight out of Alien​’s Nostromo spaceship, industrial spiral staircases lifted from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, retro fonts nodding to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: all references that Simons has touched on repeatedly in previous collections across the decades. But even given a legacy of paying homage to his favourite sci-fi flicks, this collection seemed to mark a new chapter for Simons – and, perhaps more interestingly, one that felt like a diversion from the work he’s been doing with Prada over the past two seasons.

Ataraxia, Equanimity, Dichotomy, Synchronicity, Allegiance, Devotion. These words and their meanings influenced the RAF SIMONS Autumn/Winter 2021 collection. In equilibrium, these words contrast different elements, with similarities and parallels, showing the love and loyalty to particular themes, ideas, and inspirations. Fabrications, colors, and silhouettes combine couture with youth culture, elevation...

The enthusiasm for Raf Simons’s appointment to co-creative director of Prada has been there from the start. But for some Rafaelites, it initially mingled with concern. Would the Belgian designer, who left both Dior and Calvin Klein because he felt overworked, stretch himself too thin?. According to each collection that’s...

For his Fall/Winter 2021 collection, Raf Simons creates a colorful journey that bridges the designer’s signature aesthetic with modern references and reflection. Known for his expertise in unconventional silhouettes and layering, Raf plays with materials like puffy quilts, knitwear and structured denim, and combines notions of couture with youth culture.

Fashion people talk a lot about how great things used to be, especially in the ‘90s. But isn’t it awesome how many of history’s best designers are working right now, today? Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela might have forsaken us for the cold, pedantic embrace of the art world, but Rick Owens, Miuccia Prada, Yohji Yamamoto, and Raf Simons are building history with their biannual collections. Sure, some legends are in their flop era, but many of our best thinkers are present and energized, not only with something to say but doing the most interesting work they’ve ever done. We are trained not to feel the monumentality of someone’s work until they are no longer alive. (We are in an obituary-forward era!) But it’s a joy to clock it in real time.

Raf Simons has always been in a lane of his own when it comes to fashion design. The often subversive, texture-loving designer has key style signatures (oversized silhouettes, turtlenecks, chunky knits, deep color tones) that he embraces every season, whether at Dior, Calvin Klein, or Prada. However, like previous years, these are best shown in his namesake label—and these were the primary focus for the brand’s Fall Winter ’21 co-ed collection shown today.

On Wednesday, Raf Simons dropped the lookbook for his namesake label's Fall 2021 men's and women's collections, after introducing the latter category last season. The easy, contradictory, elegant autumnal line was inspired by a series of words, which the brand noted in a press release had no "hierarchy or intentional sequence." Those are: arataxia (defined by Raf Simons as "a state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety"), equanimity ("calmness of mind or temper"), dichotomy ("division into two parts or classifications, [especially] when they are sharply distinguished or opposed"), synchronicity ("an apparently meaningful coincidence in time of two or more similar or identical events that are causally unrelated"), allegiance ("support for and loyalty to a particular group, person or belief") and devotion ("an affection, admiration or great love").

For two decades now, Raf Simons has consistently been one of the buzziest designers in fashion. Despite being part of the establishment — he’s one-half of the creative duo at Prada, and has been the top designer at Calvin Klein, Dior, and Jil Sander — he has always presented a vision of fashion that swims against the mainstream. But, according to Simons, who is one of many people on i-D’s spring cover titled, “The Utopia in Dystopia Issue,” he almost didn’t go into fashion. In the i-D interview, which also includes photographer Willy Vanderperre and stylist Olivier Rizzo, both of whom grew up with Simons, Prada’s co-creative director recalls a period in the early ‘90s when, after graduating with a focus in furniture design — not fashion — he made an about-face.

MILAN — Brands have been approaching the digital medium to present their collections in different ways and while the general goal is to return to physical runway shows, Miuccia Prada believes the efforts made so far should not go lost. “Without a public, you need to be even more concentrated...

The joint efforts of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons have not gone unnoticed. The very opposite, in fact—they’re all anyone can talk about. Since the announcement [hyperlink https://www.elle.com/fashion/a31067150/raf-simons-prada-co-creative-director/] of their co-creative director titles in February 2020, right before the COVID-19 led to global lockdowns, the runway has drastically changed. Their debut collection last September came with quiet fanfare, the only kind that can follow a digital show previewed at home, but their blooming partnership continues to flourish. Prada's fall-winter 2021 collection gives us something to be excited about.

Three collections in, the excitement surrounding Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’s partnership at the helm of Prada has yet to fade. Their third, presented on Thursday, was once again a taped runway show, followed by a discussion about questions like “What is the Prada-ness?” This time, Simons and Mrs. Prada were particularly delighted by one response: “a deep form of dislike,” the architect Rem Koolhaas said. “You explore every aspect of what you dislike, and then kind of do something with this energy.” (“That’s so true,” Simons replied, laughing along with Mrs. Prada.)

The conversations between Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons are officially becoming a tradition. The latest, to be hosted by Prada’s co-creative directors after the digital presentation of the women’s fall 2021 show on Thursday, will comprise an eclectic group of talents and friends of the brand: Marc Jacobs; Academy Award nominated filmmaker, director, writer and producer Lee Daniels; electronic musician and DJ Richie Hawtin, or Plastikman; architect Rem Koolhaas, and actress and artist Hunter Schafer. Each will be connected remotely and the virtual event will be moderated by Derek Blasberg, YouTube’s head of fashion and beauty.

Resale is one of the fastest-growing facets of fashion right now, driven by a desperate need for more sustainable shopping habits and a spreading-like-wildfire love of archive digging. One of the most difficult things about cracking the code to online vintage, though, is knowing what and how to cop. With resale platforms like Grailed and Vestiaire Collective allowing us to navigate archive pieces easier than ever before, it’s never been more simple to get your hands on grailed gems.

Looking back at it, Raf Simons’s spring 2002 collection was eerily prescient. Presented on January 7, 2001, the show featured wrapped and masked models holding torches. A gesture of terror, fear, and even cult mentality, it pre-dated the September 11 terrorist attacks by nine months and the G8 protests that led to a civilian death by six, but offers a startling parallel in hindsight. It’s that ability to take the temperature of the world—even of things that have not yet happened, and filter it through fashion that is Simons’s strength.

Raf Simons and Peter Saville’s collaboration is now the stuff of legend, but back in 2003 it was brand new. With New Order on the soundtrack, Simons presented fishtail anoraks with four album covers designed by Saville on their backs: New Order’s Technique and Power, Corruption & Lies, OMD’s Dazzle Ships, and Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures. A set of three fetched $20,000 on the secondary market in 2016. By 2017 Simons had resurrected the graphics for the spring 2017 collection he presented in New York, but Joy Division has always loomed large in his work, visually and spiritually.

The Virginia creeper plant, native to North America, is an unstoppable, deciduous vine, turning from verdant green to a kaleidoscope of reds and auburns in the fall. Botany books note that the creeper is the kinder, less toxic cousin of Poison Ivy. Raf Simons’s fall 2002 collection, named after the vine, is a kinder take on nature and environmentalism than his spring 2003 collection, which would be a paean about overconsumption and pollution.

All products featured on Vogue are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Between the loungewear boom, the second-skin knit trend, and dressing to keep warm when gathering outdoors for some socially distanced activity, a pair of long underwear or long johns doesn’t seem all that out of place. In fact, we’ve always recommended sets of Uniqlo Heattech as base layers when facing super-cold commutes. And surely, those who typically spend a lot of time in the open air often aren’t unfamiliar with the idea of slipping on thermal underwear beneath their clothes. However, our perspectives on the go-to garment shifted over the weekend, thanks to the humble long john’s fashionable upgrade for the Prada fall 2021 menswear collection, which was streamed virtually on Sunday morning.