When 1,000 fashion fans schlepped to Surray Quays this October to watch Raf Simons’ debut London Fashion Week show at the city’s foremost megaclub Printworks, most knew the vast, nave-like venue was to be shut down by Christmas and (depressingly) turned into flats.
What no one knew at the time, was that the Belgian designer’s eponymous brand would be closing its doors well before the rave club.
Announcing the news on Monday via a brief statement on Instagram, Simons revealed that the spring/summer 2023 collection would be the “conclusion of an extraordinary 27-year journey and the final season of the Raf Simons fashion brand.”
“I lack the words to share how proud I am of all that we have achieved,” he wrote. “Thank you all, for believing in our vision and for believing in me.”
While no further explanation has been given, some have speculated the unstable financial market may be the reason for the closure, while others suspect that the 54-year-old wishes to focus entirely on his co-creative directorial role at Prada, perhaps even readying for the (perhaps even sadder) day that founder and lead shareholder Miuccia Prada retires.
Simons has been vocal in recent years about the pressures faced by fashion’s leading design talents, most notably in the brilliant 2014 documentary Dior & I. Perhaps the relentless pressure of delivering four Prada collections a year alongside two for his own label had eventually – and understandably - become too much.
Whatever his reasons it’s certainly a sombre day for the fashion community, on which Simons’ influences have, over the course of nearly three decades, been profound.
First studying industrial and furniture design at Genk’s LUCA School of Art, Simons launched his menswear label in 1995. A self-trained designer entirely fixated on youth culture, his minimalist slim-fit tailoring and graphic-heavy collections signalled a shift in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s away from the highly sexed aesthetic propounded by the likes of Tom Ford and Versace.
Simons was one of the earliest proponents of putting women in menswear — a radical idea at the time
Simons held successive creative director roles at Jil Sander (2005-2012), Christian Dior (2012-2015) and Calvin Klein (2016-2018) before taking on the role of co-creative director at Prada alongside Miuccia Prada in April 2020 — a post he still holds.
Alongside his strong menswear signatures, Simons was one of the earliest proponents of putting women in menswear in the early 90s at his own label, and was one of the first to cast members of the public in his shows – a radical idea at the time.
Scroll through the gallery above for some of the best looks at his eponymous label, and revisit Raf Simons’ final SS23 collection here.
