About Raf Simons: Raf Simons is a Belgian fashion designer. Beginning in furniture design, he launched his own menswear label in 1995. In April 2012 he was announced as the creative director at Christian Dior.
Dress codes and gestures and attitudes have always inspired me, as has youth culture in general, although now I question it more. If you analyze youth cultures over history, there has always been something strict about them - you have to be like this...
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.
My dad only ever talked about two things: bicycles and Mercedes.
As an industrial designer, you design the thing by yourself, and then it goes away from you, whereas fashion is in constant relation to the body and to psychology. It makes it more complicated, and it makes it more challenging.
In fashion design, you can divide people into two groups. You have people who come with an aesthetic that is there forever, even if it evolves. Then you have people I call 'jumpers.' One season it can be this; the next season it's completely somethin...
I am somebody who focuses on a dialogue between generations - that's the drive of my work. I believe the young generation take the power; they'll take over at one point, but the older generation, they'll push it away only because of the fear. I'm the...
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.
My whole life, I've always had to be surrounded by creative things. I find it relaxing to be in touch with creations by other people.
My mother was a cleaning lady all her life.
Berlin is in a state of transition. There are lots of people who don't stay here. They pass through. They might not 'clean up,' but they mature. It is a city where people spend a significant time in their lives, and then they move on.
Our society wants things to grow, and our society wants things to become bigger and bigger. Everything has to be put under the spotlight.
I find it fascinating to see the fact that women want to buy things that they see on men.
I see there is a lot of behaviour in men's fashion, which is systematic. It's a lot about all these kind of clothes that can be easily combined with each other, and it's less and less, I think, about making a fashion statement.
Antwerp literally was a trash hole, but fashion changed that. The designers there were extreme, and their work was hard to understand. But now, people from all over the world come to Antwerp to shop.
I'm not an isolated person. The more I connect to people, the more I have the feeling that things work.
I never really have to sit at a desk thinking, 'What should I do now?' It doesn't work like that for me, and it never has. My thinking process is constant.
One of the first things I picked up when I was very, very young out of a record store was work from Peter Saville - the early things he used to do for Factory Records.
My challenge is to find a beautiful balance: to make women beautiful, to make a woman dream to wear a beautiful outfit.
I want to get away from couture just being done for a picture or for a single moment on the red carpet. I want to try and convince women that couture can be worn in the day and that there's a reality and relevance there, because that's what Mr. Chris...
