I almost loved this collection too easily - too on the spot. Shouldn't a collection have to fight for our love, for our admiration? Does fashion have anything to say if it is presented to us like this - with a ribbon on top (mind you, not a literal one)?
With virtually any Prada show, I have to go back a day later and look at the clothes again to be able to judge them with less of a critical and more of a milder eye. Then again Miuccia Prada is an
advocate of the "ugly" and most of the time the rest of us simply have to catch up to her.
But must fashion always be ahead of its times? Must it always grow on us first, for us to truly appreciate it?
I wouldn't say so. Especially not in Raf's case.
Raf is such a wonderful and sharp tailor, a true creator of a new or at least a thoroughly updated silhouette. It is a Dior silhouette, yes, but one he has grown sufficiently confident of to put his own stamp on it. (
x)
And his cuts are in a way ahead of its time.
You realize this, when looking at the likes of Jennifer Lawrence and Marion Cotillard and how the shapes of their Dior dresses just look that tiniest bit off. I would hazard a guess and say it's part of why the high street hasn't, as of yet, copied Raf's Dior
en masse, as they have with Céline
et al.
Raf's slim cuts might have caught on with the Natalie Portman's of the world, but are too
haute for the masses. Too individual. Just how much his cutting deviates from the high street one realizes
when seeing the designs on a hanger. Same goes for how distinguishedly processed the fabric are.
His designs wouldn't, of course, be anything but for his
petite mains. But as Bernard Arnault put it: "a designer-less Dior is a conductor-less Vienna Philharmonic." (
x)
For me Raf Simons is the Roger Federer of fashion.
Humble, but oh so talented and close to
a religious experience. Precise and fluid at the same time.
"Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.
The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body."
Roger Federer as Religious Experience, by David Foster Wallace (x)
via Hannah
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