June 26, 2014 |
It takes a while to process a Raf Simons show: especially when said show is held in frenzied semi-darkness, with no seats and only chiaroscuro lighting. Why? It’s unclear. There are a handful of designers who can obfuscate their clothes with theatrical presentations, and actually get away with it. Raf Simons is one of the chosen few. That’s because his aesthetic is so strong, and Raf’s aesthetic seems to be what this spring/summer show was all about – reaffirming the tropes of the Simons style, and restating them. Hence the fact that, oddly, there were some echoes to the Dior cruise collection he showed last month in New York – the rows of five buttons, both decorative and functional, being the most obvious parallel. But the shape of Simons’ jackets, pinched in gently at the waist and slightly elongated, also leant a feminine flounce to his dispassionate teenage armies.You probably got a better look than we did in the audience – under a haze of red or yellow lighting, colours were distorted. The catwalk photographers, by contrast, were poised on the floor below, under bright white light. We hacks will just have to go and see it in the showroom. And probably place personal orders for the neat crombies, sailor-collared jackets and lights-alive glow-in-the-dark stack-soled trained. Clever is Mr Simons. And as his fellow countryman Monsieur Hercule Poirot once said, it is the brain, the little grey cells, on which one must rely.
By Alexander Fury
Alexander Fury is Fashion Editor of The Independent
