London – Raf Simons on Wednesday showed his first menswear collection in Paris since
departing the House of Dior. Journalists and buyers stood in a maze of
wooden walls that formed the backdrop of a Twin Peaks-inspired collection.
There were no seats. Booming on the loudspeakers was the voice of composer
Angelo Badalamenti, famous for scoring the Twin Peaks television series.
Models wore supersized Puffa jackets, tailored coats and elongated
moth-eaten jumpers, decorated with boy scout and Letterman style patches,
and striped like sports jerseys. Trousers were cropped and tapered tight to
the leg, highlighting the sense of an ill-fitting silhouette, a uniform too
large.
“Today is David Lynch’s birthday,” the designer said backstage of the Twin
Peaks creator. “I didn’t know. But I like to think that I am now dedicating
this show to him. They were all the things that were in my mind for this
collection,” Simons explained. “That’s how I was thinking. I was trying to
not think, ‘Ah, what kind of story should I make out of Cindy Sherman and
Twin Peaks?’ you know – I didn’t want that. It was just very fragmented.”
The focus was on creating a world rather than a narrative. Inspired by
Sherman’s retrospective exhibition Untitled Horrors, the designer’s
thoughts turned to the unsettling, to what can happen when things don’t go
quite right. “I always think about nightmares, I’m always interested in
horror movies, it has been coming back a lot. I always like making
beautiful things…but it’s also interesting when something goes wrong,
something’s weird, something’s dark…there’s very much this contrast.”
Simons continued: “I titled the show Nightmares and Dreams because we all
have dreams and we all have nightmares,” he said. “There are always amazing
things and there are always horrible things, for each individual and people
in general. Not that I want to go heavy, it’s not about that.”
Images:Raf Simons AW16