Friday, June 15, 2012

riff raf pt. 2

Fall/Winter 2012 saw Raf Simons at a turning point at both his namesake label and Jil Sander. 
At Raf Simons it saw him going back to the youth cult that made him who he is today, pushing his brand to a more personal and extreme place. "Change, energy, freedom, protection." were his exact wordsAwkward schoolboys in oversized coats and shorts came down the runway, hiding behind their long bangs and clouche/beanie hybrids. 
In "The Season Of The Suit" where severe and structural reign supreme, Raf opted for lightly tailored and almost streetwear-ish proportions. Raf gave seemingly basic pieces new life with distinct takes on cuts and shapes. Like with the shorts, they came looser in the waist and slimmer in the leg (CREATE). Raf sprinkled the collection with pops of color, from the dyed tracks of hair, coming from the neckline of some of the tops to the dyed animal hide covering the entire back of some of the coats (ENERGY). Raf punctuated the looks with running shoes, the result of another Asics collaboration, to give his boys a chance to run away if they needed to, also a nod the name of the collection, "Run Fall Run" (FREEDOM). One of the main things Ilove about the collection was the outerwear. Raf said one of his main reasons for going back to designing for his "youth cult" is because he felt protective of them, which I sensed in how he literally cocooned the models in heavy wool, animal hides and my personal favorite, the teddy bear coats (PROTECT). 
A very radical departure from the very sophisticated, gentlemenswear he's been showing lately, Raf seemed to just want to take the severity out of menswear.

But at Jil Sander, Raf took severity to heart. 
A subversive interpretation of masculinity, esteem and lunacy. 
Raf's man at Jil Sander, obviously a high-standing member of the 1%, doesn't want a black suit. He wants a black leather suit with a black leather trench and a black leather sweater--Oh and a black leather lunch bag. He could have been a banker, he could have been a serial killer. He could have been both, fleeing the underground parking deck where he left the dead bodies and going to his high-rise corner office to change into the clothes he has stashed at the office (most likely more black leather will be involved.) 
 
The Jil Sander man likes his tailoring, extraordinary and his blacks, absolute. Or maybe I'm interpreting it wrong. Maybe he's less American Psycho, more The Matrix, scouring the Space/Time continuum searching for the truth. I would guess it takes structured tailoring and the darkest black to navigate the Matrix. But none of that explains the sailor collars and sweaters embroidered with patches of childlike renderings of dinosaurs, whales and boomboxes....hmph maybe its all just some sort of existential allegory (as with most of Raf's collections.) Maybe, because after all this is his last collection at Jil Sander, this was Raf's metaphoric 'fade to black'.

1 comment:

  1. You should take all your runway review posts, and compile them into a book so that I can read them anytime I begin to feel uninspired. Reading your posts is like a spiritual uplifting for me... SWEAR TO GOD.

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