For all its flirtation with “the revolution,” fashion is a pretty safe medium. While not one that necessarily shies away from left wing ideals of rebellion, independence, or even anarchy, fashion--both on and off the runway--is rarely willing to be more than a rework of post war adolescent styles. This raises the question: do rehashed fashion trends address any new issues, or do they just incite ignorance as they drift further from their original source?

Three years back fashion-designers-come-conceptual-artists Bless and Noki Custom decided to dump seasonal collections for one-off products. Come 2001 this was taken up as a “trend towards individuality” (i) by the fashion mainstream, another chance for fashion to have validity past the quick visual fix. A year on, and the bandwagon has been bogged down by buzzword badges and mass produced… pardon, customized denim jackets, all claiming to be “keeping it real” while failing to consider the implications embedded in the styles they plunder.

The fact that fashion and fashion imagery are renowned for their falsehood is perhaps what prompts a few maverick image makers to keep questioning what fashion can say, rather than what it does say. Thankfully Nick Knight, one the world's most influential photographers, is among those who continue to assert that fashion is a valuable medium, capable of expressing cultural views and values. “There is now an audience for political expression through fashion… much the same way that there was for an audience for politicized pop music in the Sixties” (ii). This sentiment seems to be shared whole-heartedly by Belgium fashion designer and cultural producer Raf Simons.

Raf Simons is an alien within his own industry. His shows break the codes that the fashion mainstream has recklessly placed on society's youth. His clothes often scream statements of a fighting spirit for a positive cause, evocative of cult films, pop music, and past generations. His images are “tokens of self imposed exile” (iii) when placed next to the glitz of Steven Meisel’s photographs for Versace or Avedon’s polished photographs for Dior Homme. Like Jack Kerouac, who, dissatisfied with “the best the white world has to offer” (iv), yearned to be black, Raf Simons identifies with his fellow outcasts. Rejecting the privileges of stardom, Raf turns his focus to the fans, paying tribute to a group within society that generally gets dismissed in a whirlwind of marketing slang by the “straight” world.

Looking at the presentation of any number of Raf Simons’ past shows will reveal a unique empathy for the music affiliated with these groups, from the idealistic lyrics through to the layered instrumentations. To say Raf Simons and his team of co-collaborators are inspired by the music used in their presentations is to make too fine a point. Questions such as, “What is the sound of the latest Raf Simons show?” are irrelevant; the shows are never reminiscent of your typical Wallpaper* CD selector.

While many designer shows try to fit the most suitable tracks around a pre-designed collection, Raf seems to use music as a starting point, from which his collection is built. Even the titles of each presentation are habitually re-contextualized from songs, all of which address recurring themes of forbidden identity, gender ambiguity and the subterranean. For instance, past collections include Confusion (New Order), We Only Come Out At Night (Smashing Pumpkins), and Radioactivity (Kraftwerk). One collection even featured tops with images of Richey Edwards, the missing Manic Street Preachers guitaris. Though Raf is not even a die-hard Manic fan, this doesn’t mean that he has slipped into avoiding the implications embedded in his chosen reference. Rather, once again, he went farther to understand these ideas through the perspective of the fans, “I love to see the way they lose themselves completely in their own world” (v).

His shows are generally in two parts; one, a presentation of the clothes, the other, a crossover video that acts as a mood piece/pop music clip. In his Spring/Summer 2002 show, “Woe onto those who spit on the Fear Generation… The Wind will blow it back,” Raf carried on from his previous Riot collection with the feelings of confusion and signs of silent protest expressed by “the post-millennium youth.” To signify this silent protest, white oversized slogan t-shirts and patched hooded jumpers enveloped models, while Arabic keffiyeh headdresses concealed their heads. Some fashion press kicked up a fuss, trying to tie links between the symbolism of the show and events in New York. Oddly enough, this was the same press that failed to comment when Top Shop, along with the rest of the fashion mainstay, revived the 80s—celebrating a decade rife with class warfare, race riots, and overspending. The fact is that Raf Simons Spring/Summer 2002 show was about idealism as opposed to nihilism. Influenced once again by popular culture, this time through Todd Haynes mysterious disease film Safe—in which upper-middle class homemaker Carol White is forced to live her days as an outsider, gradually growing allergic to the modern world around her.

While never failing to create aesthetically well-made products and beautiful environments, Raf Simons always maintains an awareness of the culture he references. Throughout his collaborations with writer Peter De Potter, photographer Willy Vandeperre, and installation artist Robert Gober; Raf Simons has avoided the nauseating glamour of fashion, instead conveying a real world away from the Paris catwalks. In many ways the work created by Raf Simons follows the belief of film-maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who once said, “Revolution doesn't belong on the cinema screen, but outside, in the world” (vi). Things going the way they are, Raf Simons should have “the revolution” sorted within the next few years.

Jason Evans is an Art Director at Studio Anybody

Notes:

(i) Baron, Fabien
Arena Homme, Autumn/Winter 01/02
(ii) Knight, Nick
Taken from ‘A War Against Aesthetics’ by Jo-Ann Furniss, Showstudio.com
(iii) Hebdige, Dick
Subculture, Methuen&Co, 1979
(iv) Kerouac, Jack
On the Road, Viking, 1957
(v) Heath, Ashley
The New Raf Riff, Arena Homme, Autumn/Winter 01/02
(vi) Elsaesser, Thomas
A Cinema of Vicious Circles in Fassbinder, British Film Institute, London, 1976.