“The future, for me, is romantic. I don’t understand people who say the past is romantic. Romantic, for me, is something you don’t know yet, something you can dream about, something unknown and mystical. I find that fascinating.”
Romance and future, these are the two key words to try to describe one of the most deflagrant news in the fashion world, Raf Simons will be Prada‘s creative co-creative director and will collaborate elbow to elbow with Miuccia. The news was announced on Sunday, February 23rd with a specially convened press conference.
“I’m very happy with this new phase. The contract with Raf will start on April 2nd and the first collection will be on the catwalk in September. With this I do not intend to take a step backwards, nor am I looking for a successor. I’m not that old!”
Miuccia said, while Simons told how everything was born and what his commitment will be.
“I’m always looking for new challenges. Patrizio Bertelli has been looking for me since I left Calvin Klein, and we have developed our collaboration over the last year. I will work exclusively with the Prada brand, not Miu Miu, and I will live between Milan, Antwerp and New York, continuing to look after my brand”.
Bertelli, CEO of Prada group and husband of Miuccia, had already chosen Simons as the creative director of Jil Sander in 2005, but this is the first time that two designers of this level are working together to create a new collection.
Raf Simons, born in Neerpelt, Belgium in 1968, studied Industrial and furniture design in Genk while listening to Krafterk and Joy Division. In Antwerp, however, a new creative trend is emerging in the field of fashion experimentation, thanks to the likes of Ann Demeulemeester, Van Noten and Margiela herself, and Raf is immediately fascinated.
“Nothing in fashion has had more emotional impact on me than Margiela’s third show. It was 1989 and I was an intern for Walter Van Beirendonck. Martin’s show was on a playground. They had asked the parents of the children to use the playground and they said, yes, but only if our children can come. The models appeared in long white dresses, and suddenly the children started playing with them. It was so moving. Everyone was crying. Me too.”
“As a student I thought fashion was shallow, all ostentation and glamour, but that show changed everything. I came out of it thinking that’s what I was gonna do. That show is the reason I became a designer.”
What you’ve just read is the beginning of everything, Martin Margiela‘s all-white show for the SS90.
1995 is the year that Simons leaves the world of industrial design and embraces what will become his life and make his fortune. The intimate relationship that exists between the body, psychology and fashion is the creative spark of the Flemish designer, a constant and complex challenge that led him to debut on the catwalk with his first men’s collection in 1997.
Valentine De Saint-Point, in January 1913, drew the Futurist manifesto of lust and we borrow a phrase emblematic of the text to describe how visceral, carnal almost, the research in Simons’ work is: “lust is the carnal search for the unknown”.
Raf is clamorously attracted by what he does not know, he is lustful in this sense, the unknown is a source of maximum inspiration for him.
“When I fully understand something, it stops inspiring me.”
After 10 years Bertelli’s proposal arrives, who wants him to be creative director of Jil Sander, Simons accepts it totally and makes the brand a point of reference.
Thanks to this work, made of foresight, attention and audacity, Raf Simons is called to replace John Galliano as womenswear creative director of Dior. An absolute legitimacy, tradition and contemporaneity at the service of the French maison, impressionism, flowers and above all elegance. Three years and six collections that bring a 60% increase in sales, a huge success but that will not be enough to keep Simons at the head of the French fashion house.
In 2015 Raf leaves the role of creative director of Dior to focus on “other interests, my brand and passions beyond my job”.
The research continues, the desire to deepen and learn new things, a constant push that leads him to become chief creative director of Calvin Klein. Until 2018 he will contribute to giving new life to the American brand, renewing it in all its aspects, giving it that halo of exclusivity that has long been missing.
In conclusion, however, there is a need for reflection.
Prada’s choice to have an unusual figure as a creative co-director we can try to explain it in two ways.
The first is to want to distinguish even more the current style of the brand, a mix of streetwear and haute couture that is the core of Simons’ work.
The second is related to a more hype issue, let me explain.
It was necessary for the Milanese brand to grab an absolute giant loved both by street culture and above all by archive fashion lovers. Simons is a real guru for these fans and, considering what Virgil Abloh declared not more than two months ago, that the next evolution of streetwear will be to dig into the archives, the choice of Patrizio Bertelli and Miuccia Prada is in this sense more far-sighted than you might think.
We just have to wait for the Spring/Summer 21 collection, which will be the first to bear the signature of the pair of creative directors of Prada.
