The geek who conquered the fashion world

He's an intellectual Belgian with a passion for art and youth culture. He's also the most influential menswear designer in the world - and his new womenswear collection could change contemporary fashion. So why haven't you heard of Raf Simons? Alice Fisher travels to Milan to meet the new king of the catwalk
Interview by
Sun 20 Jan 2008 18.51 EST

Jil Sander's spring/summer 2008 womenswear show starts typically enough. The elegant white showroom on Milan's Via Luca Beltrami is rammed and the high ceiling echoes with the burble of gossiping fashion folk, mainly dressed in the severe black of winter accessorised with the obligatory sunglasses despite the fact it's 9.30am on a mild September morning. But when the show starts the shades, for once, prove useful: instead of dimming, the overhead lights intensify fiercely enough to make you blink. It's an appropriate start to a show of clothes coloured so vividly that the hues burn like retinal after-images.

The models troop down the catwalk to a delicate plinking soundtrack of Japanese strings. But something is slightly off; the atmosphere starts to feel a little eerie. I wonder if it's because of the sudden downpour that seems to be beating against the room's four arched windows. As more girls go by - in navy minis, voluminous jumpsuits, dresses of smoky grey tulle and shoes which look as if they're covered in elf scaffolding or something equally otherworldly - I realise the sound's not rain but the click of cameras. Since the show's start, the room has become so quiet I can hear the photographers snapping away at the end of the catwalk. A model passes in a transparent white top with what look like thick paper clips dangling from its sleeves, and from my seat I can hear the clips chink together. Normally, fashion shows are fuss and noise and energy, but the Jil Sander audience is transfixed for the duration. Until the startled applause at the show's end becomes a standing ovation, the atmosphere is more art gallery than catwalk.

'It's weird that you say this,' says Raf Simons, creative director of Jil Sander and the designer responsible for mesmerising the world's assembled fashion editors, when we meet in December. 'It's something I hear more and more. People tell me that at the shows you can hear a needle drop. I wonder: is it a Jil Sander thing or is it because of what I do?'

Designer Jil Sander's legacy is a great one, but Simons is being far too modest. The 40-year-old Belgian has single-handedly saved the Jil Sander brand, and any response to a collection now is a response to him. Best known for power-dressing businesswomen in the Nineties, Sander is a minimalist German whose sleek designs were the epitome of understated luxury. But by the time Simons joined in 2005, the label's reputation was in tatters. Sander had walked away from her own label twice after she sold the company to the Prada Group in 1999 only to discover she couldn't work with the conglomerate's CEO, Patrizio Bertelli (the famously domineering husband of designer Miuccia Prada). Sander left for good in 2003 and is now rumoured to work as wardrobe adviser to German chancellor Angela Merkel. Before Simons arrived, critics and customers alike had turned their noses up at successive seasons of mediocre clothes stripped of the label's trademark extravagant fabrics and severe tailoring. The line had lost its weirdly sexy Teutonic je ne sais quoi (or should that be ich weiss nicht was es ist

So the thought of Simons at Jil Sander thrilled the fashion world. His name isn't well known outside the industry, but he's revered by fashion folk. His eponymous Antwerp-based menswear label launched in 1995. And over the years, though his collections only sold directly to a niche market of young, cool Europeans, in the zeitgeisty, gestalt-ish way that fashion works, his ideas had exerted important influence on the mainstream. He was the first designer to put black, skinny suits on young, skinny boys who weren't professional models. A collection called Sometimes You Have to Fight for Your Freedom featured balaclavas and Arabic keffiyeh scarves. It referenced anti-globalisation and eco-terrorism; it was shown in 2001 just before 9/11 commentators made much of the guerrilla element. But the show was also right on the fashion money for its mix of hooded tops and classic tailoring. His collections became known for their intelligent cultural references and extreme, modern design ideas, which were then taken up and echoed by other menswear labels. Simons always seemed to be driving things forward. His work became known as futuristic.

'I don't mind the association with futurism,' he says, 'as long as that's not interpreted as using an aesthetic already known as futuristic. We like to make things modern.' (Simons's answers tend to be complicated but delivered in a gentle and straightforward manner.)

Giving someone with such a reputation the keys to Jil Sander was inspired. And though Simons's first few collections for the fashion house were exercises in desk tidying, he rediscovered the soul of the label. There were lovely tailored suits and the use of technical fabrics for both men and women, and he also hinted at change by adding sequined and velvet dresses to womenswear and slimmer trousers to the men's range. But this season Raf Simons has stamped his identity on the label. The classic Jil Sander silhouettes have vanished and the collections have the grand themes of colour and light. Compared to this season's other design inspirations - which include Batman (Luella womenswear) and the Fifties (Gucci menswear) - it sounds ridiculously esoteric. But Simons has made his ideas work. His dresses are colour-saturated; his men's suits glow as if coated in phosphor.

And for all the cleverness, the big themes, he only cares that people like the clothes: 'Some critics and customers will automatically see we've used Yves Klein blue and make the link; others won't. It's not a problem. They don't have to know to find something beautiful, to appreciate it.' For those who need to brush up on their art history, International Klein Blue was developed by postmodernist artist Yves Klein as part of an investigation into the colours that best represented the concepts that interested him as an artist. And, no, I didn't recognise that particular shade of blue at the show.

New York Times fashion critic and fan of Simons's work Cathy Horyn thought the new womenswear collection was revolutionary: 'It did things that we in fashion have been waiting for. Transparency, light, colour, proportion - it was new and will lead to something. This season's [collection] will become one of those defining moments in the course of contemporary fashion.'

Aside from his remarkable current collections for Jil Sander, there is another reason why the fashion world is particularly interested in Simons. There has long been a rivalry between Simons and Dior Homme designer Hedi Slimane. The two designers' use of pop-cultural references, music, and the aesthetics and lives of real young men in their shows provoked comparisons - and, perhaps inevitably, bad feeling among Simons, Slimane and the various fashion editors who had championed them. But Slimane's final collection for Dior Homme is currently hanging on the sale rails. Once the last skinny suit and final pair of black jeans have gone, so too will his presence in menswear. He departed Dior Homme last year for pastures uncertain. With Slimane absent from the shops and shows, Simons is now seen as the undisputed best menswear designer working today. For someone most people have never heard of, he's doing remarkably well.

The man who stirs up such ardour and respect is unprepossessing in person. Dressed in a black jumper and trousers, he looks a little gloomy next to the gaudy white Christmas tree that dominates the marble lobby of the Grand Visconti Palace hotel in Milan where we meet, but then so would anyone other than Dolly Parton. When we sit down, however, I'm the one who rifles through a wooden box of rare tea blends. Simons orders a Coca-Cola. He says that the waitress brought him a rum and Coke earlier by accident, but that it was a little early in the day for that. It's nice to think of one of the most influential designers in the world relaxing after work with a rum and Coke rather than Cristal.

Simons is in the thick of preparing for the next round of shows - the autumn/winter 2008 collections for Jil Sander and Raf Simons. Currently he spends one week in Antwerp, the next in Milan, in order to devote equal time to the two brands. He likes switching his brain from one to the other and finds it easy. Simons prefers to do more than one thing at a time. He taught fashion as a visiting professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna from 2000 to 2005 (a position that's also been held by Vivienne Westwood and Helmut Lang), has curated exhibitions at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, and collaborated with photographer David Sims on a book project. He loves his private art collection (which includes work by sculptors Stephen Gontarski and Don Brown; paintings by Dana Schutz and Daniel Sinsel) and also acts as a consultant for the Cigrang Freres art collection in Belgium. Though right now it's Fashion Week that he's focused on. Does he like the shows?

'I like very much to put on fashion shows. The performance is the last control we have over the composition. We've made the clothes, the colours, the fabrics - but after this it's not mine any more. It is the audience's. Then it goes to stores and the audience does what it wants: how people wear it is a new thing again, though it's a very fascinating thing for me to see how it is integrated. But the show is also a difficult period for me. I feel so much happiness and respect from the audience that I do like it, but I don't feel in place. I like to take these people [fashion editors, friends and buyers] very seriously, but it's so fast you can't. There are 50, 100 people lining up backstage to meet you and it's like' - he makes a brilliant industrial conveyor-belt sound made perfect by his rolling, fricative Flemish pronunciation - 'sometimes I can't even remember they were there.'

For a simple question, it's a complicated yet ultimately complete answer. This is something that Simons seems very good at. As we talk about his designs he never once feels the need to mention individual garments nor deviate from a theoretical discussion of his collections. When pushed, he does namecheck a Jil Sander dress with a circular cut at the back which was a surprise bestseller (he thought the aesthetic and prohibitive cost would limit sales). He thinks about commerciality, of course he does, but that doesn't seem to be what fundamentally interests him. For example, his attraction to the Jil Sander brand is, he says, abstraction. 'The ideas are very much about material and development, certain ideas that are abstracted to an aesthetic outcome which an audience with an understanding of Jil Sander will link to... whoa, that sounds complicated,' he chortles. Then regroups: 'I mean I could tell a story very directly, and people would understand that story. That's something we will never do here. I would do a dress that would link to culture or the environment, but not in a way that you would immediately see.'

At the moment, when fashion is so lumpenly literal, it's an unusual tack. Current trends tend to be no more complicated than 'the Sixties' or 'floral' and most styles only fly if they're snapped on the back of young, pretty celebrities. Simons's dream isn't to find a place in Lindsay Lohan's wardrobe - he dreams about the future. Although his work over the years has referenced everything from skateboarders to artist Anish Kapoor, futurism - or as he prefers it, modernity - has been the driving force.

Horyn thinks Simons is one of the few designers who has actually moved fashion forward, too. She remembers with particular fondness seeing the autumn/winter 2004 Raf Simons show: 'It was a Saturday night in Paris, July 2004; it was the History of My World show, staged on escalators. It was one of those truly rare moments. I've only stood up once for a designer at a fashion show, but I wish I'd stood up then, because it is still one of the great modernistic collections. [Designers] say they want to talk about the future but it's rarely believable. This was.'

Simons is in love with the future, because he thinks it's the most romantic thing in the world. 'If I see a fashion show with literal influences, it doesn't make me think any more. It doesn't make me dream. I fantasise about what the future could be in terms of aesthetic and psychology. It's the most difficult thing to do because you have to start from the past - your favourite architect, your favourite song - you take it all with you. Though I am very fascinated by the Sixties principle of futurism - Paco Rabanne, Cardin, Courreges - who really were thinking about the future. It was connected with romance then; all the Americans were fantasising about the moon landing and how we may live on another planet.'

And that's the psychological aspect that interests you? 'Oh yes.'

Simons grew up in Neerpelt, Belgium. He was an only child. His father joined the army at the age of 17; his mother worked as a cleaner. Neerpelt has a population of 16,000 now, and back then the only access to popular culture in this rural area came from the local record shop, where Simons bought Kraftwerk and Joy Division records as a teenager. Music has always been important to him and he's referenced Richey Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers, Joy Division's Ian Curtis and Peter Saville's Factory Records artwork in various Raf Simons collections. He did well at school but resisted his teachers' efforts to guide him in the sensible direction of law or medicine, and instead headed off to study industrial design at college in nearby Genk, a city dominated by car manufacture. He started his professional life as a furniture designer but became fascinated by fashion when the Belgian designers known as the Antwerp Six - internationally, the best known are Dries van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester and Walter Van Beirendonck - became famous in the Eighties. He says he wasn't interested in fashion before then, he was interested in 'dress code', which seems a very Raf-ian distinction. With the help of Linda Loppa (then director of the Antwerp Fashion Academy) he worked as an intern with Van Beirendonck and finally launched his first collection in 1995.

Despite his love of the future, Simons will never forget his past. Not least because inspiration for his Raf Simons label is inextricably linked to the lives of young Belgians, men embroiled in youth culture and life in the country where he grew up. Since the beginning, Simons has cast models for his fashion shows from Antwerp's streets. Some have walked for him for 10 years or more.

'We have a social, psychological dialogue with them,' Simons explains. 'From the beginning we wanted to work with young people and grow up with them, but always catch up with new generations. I think the young are very open to dialogue with older people, but it's not the same the other way around. But you know, the office is not a social institution - we don't have time to talk every day, but the guys come for fittings and shoots. Antwerp's a small place, so you run into each other. I felt very much helped by an older generation when I was young. The person who made me believe in what I do now was Linda Loppa. I thought I had seen a lot with New Wave and art and going out. Then suddenly I was standing in her house and I found a mentality that was so open and revolutionary. One generation can make the other dream about the future and believe it. I don't want to be perceived by young people as this old bastard complaining about them.'

It actually sounds as if he would have reason to complain about them. Part of creating a Raf Simons collection is asking these models what they think of the clothes. 'Sometimes they say: "I think it looks like shit." These kids from Antwerp, they don't care. If one in 40 say it's shit, you think: he had no taste. If 20 say it, you think: maybe this isn't what this generation is interested in.'

It's this analysis of youth culture and the relationship with and interest in young people which led to comparisons with Hedi Slimane, who developed a similar relationship with his models in Paris when he started at Dior Homme in 2000. But Simons doesn't want to aggravate the situation with Slimane by talking about it. Though he does laugh at the thought of being the best menswear designer - 'Well, that wouldn't be bad for me!' - he wants to move on from any sense of rivalry. 'It's just about me now, dealing with a new grown-up product.'

The spring/summer 2008 Raf Simons collection is, in fact, grown up. It suggests an alternative to the younger generation's main preoccupation: computers. Simons says he worries about how much time kids spend online and what this does to their experience.

'Computers let people avoid people, going out to explore. It's so different to just open a website instead of looking at a Picasso in a museum in Paris. Exploring countries, people, even sexuality - it loses an aspect of nature which I think is important... God, I sound like a teacher, don't I? But the young kids that we cast used to talk about where they'd been, what they'd done. Lately, they've got a lot of information, but it's all from a computer. They're skipping so much. They skip school. When I was young, I knew I wanted to do something creative and run, run, run from this Catholic, mathematics, Latin, Greek education. I was trying to find out everything about art. I realise now that though I didn't like school, it was a good reality. These kids don't feel what an important part of reality that is.'

Simons doesn't just think about the heavy things, though. He enjoys talking about pop culture, professing a current preference for 'technological' music over bands because 'you don't get the performance and the cool kids - it's construction and sound, and I find that more fascinating'. He loves movies. Of course he liked the Joy Division biopic Control - 'the band has always been a big obsession' - but his favourite last year was the serial-killer film Zodiac, which he thought was 'standout because I didn't expect it be like that at all, not having a defined ending, I liked that'. He smiles: 'It's funny you ask these questions, I always ask my assistants - "What's your favourite vegetable, what's your favourite fruit juice?" - because I think about this all the time.'

We have a positively gossipy conversation about fashion designers and magazines; he expresses admiration for one designer's recent weight loss. 'He's done amazingly well,' Simons says. 'When you get to 40, you think about these things.' And he pats his nonexistent belly ruefully. We wait outside for taxis so that he can smoke. He has to head back to the Jil Sander workshops and reinvent fashion. I have to catch a plane. When my car draws up, he kisses me warmly on each cheek. 'Have a very merry Christmas,' he says. 'And a happy New Year.' And he smiles and waves, looking genuinely excited at the thought of the festivities to come. The future, after all, in Raf's world is the stuff of romance and dreams.