Raf Simons Fall/Winter 2018 Menswear Review
At the end of a very packed New York Fashion Week day, Raf Simons took his viewers away from all of the commercial (and frankly boring) collections. Once inside, the journalists and the hypebeasts gathered around a black table covered in gross amounts of wine glasses half full, wilting flowers, and heavy blocks of cheese stabbed by massive knives. They were forced to stand and gaze at the dramatic spotlights scan across the large room. Neon rave lights began to pounce across the space and booming music set the scene. The collection was called "Youth in Motion", and inspired by the film Christiane F., a 1981 film about a young girl becoming seduced by the drug scene of 1970s Berlin, which seems fitting for a Simons collection.
What Simons unleashed was an exploration of fetishitic masculinity and modern tailoring by way of rave culture. These men looked a little strung out, stepping around heaps of leftovers from the party the night before. And yet it was completely beautiful in a sort of Pieter Aertsen way. The sterile Wellington boots that squeaked by were over tightly tailored wool trousers, jeans, and cargo khakis. There were direct screenshots from Christiane F. on the knees of several pants. On top was wonderful experimentations in silhouettes. Wide, almost cocoon style top coats, parkas, and single-breasted blazers served as desirable outerwear paired with latex gloves. One specific coat, a yellow and white Prince Charles check had belting at the waist that can only be seen from the back. The belt was woven in and out of the shell of the coat and meant to be buckled from the right hip, which was something new and exploratory.
This twisting and draping of suiting wool was almost couture-like, if ravers ever had the desire to wear couture. What the ravers and streetwear-obsessed people will buy are the blatant "DRUGS" hoodies towards the end of the collection. Meant to be a literal representation of the themes within this collection, they will certainly sell out to Simons' cult of followers faster than a chemically stimulated heartbeat. Most avant-garde of the pieces shown were the turtleneck sweaters (please don't call them dickies) that were attached to the wearer's neck, but then flopped around the body two-dimensionally, like large bibs or foulards, with sleeves and hemlines warping down the body like some sort of hallucination.
Thankfully, this step forward in menswear was not a hallucination, with all it's whimsy, drama, and movement, but it will definitely leave a few people high and dry for more original and boundary pushing menswear from other brands in the coming seasons.
Photos Courtesy of VogueRunway.com