April 14, 2016 |
On the occasion of the announcement of Raf Simons’ return to Pitti Uomo, we transport you, via the power of imagination alone, to when he showed his Jil Sander SS11 collection at the Florentine fair, dug out from Ten Towers’ bulging archives…
So, there we were, sitting in the garden of an 18th-, 19th-, whatever-century palazzo (it was old, okay?). It was also raining, pouring down. And then it stopped. The sun began to set. And we were tripping. Before our very eyes appeared colour. On men. Eye-popping, retina-burning colour. Set against a backdrop of fiery sunset sky turning to midnight blue. First thought? How stunning. We might even go so far as to venture a “breathtaking”. Second? What was in that drink? Jil Sander and colour? We must have been spiked. Then the colours all sort of swirled. Or, at least, we think they did – remember, we were mid-meltdown. Had Raf spiked our champagne with LSD? Then came the sudden realisation that we were, in fact, taking part in some modern-day art/performance piece. We were not really at a catwalk show, we were being used as pawns in Mr Simons’s covert attempt to revive acid tests. We spied Tom Wolfe opposite us, making notes for an Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test part deux, and is that Mountain Girl peering out from behind that hedge? God damn you, Ken Kesey, popping up from under our chair. Will you please stop filming us? What did that random just ask? Can we pass the acid test? How the hell do we know? We’re out of our minds and, besides, we always hated exams, did anything we could to skive off, including dry heaves over a bucket. We blame Raf entirely. He’d thrown us into weird hallucinogenic territory. We can deal with the clothes. Nice, minimalist, unfussy shapes. Modern. But the colours, that turquoise, those pinks, the peachy orange, mint green, even yellow, for Christ’s sake – how the hell are we supposed to carry those off? Our skins are the wrong shade of green. It goes with nothing, even black. “Where is the nearest tanning booth?” we thought. “Do they even have tanning booths in Florence? We need golden limbs pronto to carry of these dazzlingly creations. But, first things first, how the hell do we get to the car? Why is it now shaped like a giraffe? Why is everyone dressed in the rainbow creations riding off into the sunset on said giraffes? Why aren’t we? Does anybody know? Can any one help? Please.”
Taken from Issue 24 of 10 Men, photograph courtesy of Pitti
