Style icon Raf Simons shutters his influential label

“I lack the phrases to share how proud I’m of all that we have now achieved,” he wrote. “I’m grateful for the unbelievable help from my staff, from my collaborators, from the press and patrons, from my family and friends, and from our devoted followers and dependable followers. Thanks all, for believing in our imaginative and prescient and for believing in me.”

Raf Simons’ model, which started as an underground menswear label within the Nineties, had turn out to be a mainstay of main runways. Credit score: Kristy Sparow/Getty Photographs

Simons didn’t instantly return a request for touch upon the choice to discontinue his label.

True to Simons’ historical past of taking cues from countercultral music scenes, together with new wave, punk and digital, his last assortment was offered at London’s Printworks, a famed nightclub (and former newspaper manufacturing unit) set to shut subsequent yr. The presentation — his label’s first at London Style Week — was delayed as a result of Queen Elizabeth II’s passing and passed off in mid-October. For the present, he eschewed the hierarchies frequent at runway reveals, utilizing the large area to ask a crowd of 800 individuals from amongst and past trend’s elite.

Raf Simons beforehand held posts at Christian Dior (pictured), Jil Sander and Calvin Klein, earlier than taking over a co-creative director position at Prada in 2020. Credit score: Dominique Charriau/WireImage/Getty Photographs

In what now appeared to sign the change in his profession, Simons printed phrases from the late Belgian painter Philippe Vandenberg on among the assortment’s clothes.

“They’re merciless phrases, like ‘Kill all of them and dance,'” he was quoted as saying of the prints. “However (Vandenberg) did not imply killing individuals — he meant killing issues that you simply’re doing creatively as a way to transfer on and discover additional.”