“[I want] to bring some emotion back, to what I felt in the nineties, because I see a lot of amazing clothes, but I don’t see a lot of emotion now.”

That statement was directed towards Simons’ exploration of Christian Dior’s famous silhouettes from the 50s, though it seems our friends at LN-CC in London thought it an apt time to reflect on Simons’ early years as head of his own label.

LN-CC are offering a selection of rare pieces from their archive of Simons’ work from 1998 – 2008, many of which display the traits that have made Simons one of the most important contemporary menswear designers.

The Raf Simons aesthetic is by now well known, though its evolution showcases the ideas that Simons has drawn heavily on throughout his career – youth subcultures, underground music, sportswear and tailoring.

http://www.ln-cc.com/mens-brands/raf-simons/icat/raf-simons-mens

Images courtesy of LN-CC

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KARL HOLMQVIST / ADRIAN CRISPIN / TOMOKO NAKAMICHI / AMIE MILNE / POPPY DE VILLENEUVE / UWE VAN AFFERDEN / ELIZA HELMERICH / SONIA RENTSCH / STEVE REICH / HIROYUKI HAMADA / NASOMATTO / AMOS FRICKE / CHIN TEO / TIMOTHY MOORE / TRISTIAN KOENIG / GARY JENNINGS / JAMES MCCREADY / ANDRZEJ NOWICKI / DANIEL GURTON

Printed in Berlin, Germany, using premium quality uncoated stock, with a 350gsm richly textured, stark white cover.

The Louvre-Lens is a planned branch museum of the Musée du Louvre, due to open soon in the industrial French city of Lens, Pas-de-Calais

02

ELANA HERZOG / DANIEL GURTON / MELLA JAARSMA / AMOS FRICKE / PHILLIP ADAMS / ALBERT COMPER / HUBERT MAROT / GREG NEVILLE / ROGER CAILLOIS / CEDRIC ARNOLD

Printed in Melbourne, Australia, using premium quality uncoated and high gloss stock, with a 350gsm richly textured, stark white cover.

The relationship between an artist’s work and attire should not take the form of a direct visual analogy. A stripe painter may not wear stripes.

The relationship between an artist’s work and attire should function in the manner of a dialectic, in which the discrepancy between the personal appearance of the artist and the appearance of her work is resolved into a higher conceptual unity. An artist’s attire should open her work to a wider range of interpretive possibilities.

The artist’s sartorial choices are subject to the same hermeneutic operations as are his work. When dressing, an artist should imagine a five-paragraph review of his clothes, the attitudes and intentions they reveal, their topicality, their relationship to history, the extent to which they challenge or endorse, subvert or affirm dominant forms of fashion written by a critic he detests.

Communicating an attitude of complete indifference to one’s personal appearance is only achievable through a process of self-reflexive critique bordering on the obsessive. Artists who are in reality oblivious to how they dress never achieve this effect.

Whereas a dealer must signal, in wardrobe, a sympathy to the tastes and tendencies of the collector class, an artist is under no obligation to endorse these. Rather, the task of the artist with regard to fashion is to interrogate the relationship between cost and value as it pertains to clothing, and, by analogy, to artworks.

An artist compensates for a limited wardrobe budget by making creative and entertaining clothing choices, much in the way that a dog compensates for a lack of speech through vigorous barking.

Artists are not only permitted but are in fact required to be underdressed at formal institutional functions. But egregious slovenliness without regard to context is a childish play, easily seen through.

An artist may dress like a member of the proletariat, but should not imagine he is fooling anyone.

The affluent artist may make a gesture of class solidarity by dressing poorly. She is advised to keep in mind that, at an art opening, the best way to spot an heiress is to look for a destitute schizophrenic. Middle-class or working-class artists, the destitute, and the schizophrenic can use this principle to their social advantage.

The extension of fashion into the violation of norms of personal hygiene and basic grooming constitutes the final arena for radicalism in artists fashion.

Brave, fragrant souls! You will be admired from a distance.