Raf Simons Quotations

I'm a designer, and for me, things are always evolving, and such evolution is necessary.

Unlike fashion, art isn't applied. It doesn't have to serve anybody. It doesn't have to be there for any other reason than to give an impression of what the world is about.

My challenge is to find a beautiful balance: to make women beautiful, to make a woman dream to wear a beautiful outfit.

I'm not so rock and roll. I'm more techno.

My dad only ever talked about two things: bicycles and Mercedes.

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.

Every weekend, I'm on the highway to Antwerp. I need to be there, to have the calm. It's a whole different life: I jump on my bike, and it's so small, I can be anywhere in a minute. I like to be at home when there's free time because when you're at a big company, you're constantly surrounded by 30 people.

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.

If I see a fashion show with literal influences, it doesn't make me think any more. It doesn't make me dream.

Fashion is so mass-produced now; I hope there will come a refocus on how people see couture. And I would also hope for a new focus on the craft.

I know this independence is what people like most about my brand.

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.

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 opposite; I'm curious.

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.

I couldn't go now to a brand that had a niche attitude like... gothic. I couldn't do that. Well, I could do it, but I wouldn't find it interesting, challenging.

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 or like that.

I'm shy, but not on a one-to-one basis. Over the years, I have become acclimatised to a bit of publicity.

I'm usually very attracted to things that I can't define. If something's too clear, it's very often not inspiring to me anymore.

Fashion is such an octopus. You're connected to so many people: suppliers, pattern makers, production teams, marketing teams, vendors.

You can instantly spot a Chanel woman, so I want to develop the Dior woman.

Fashion has a long interest in collaborative situations.

My point of view is that if I love a certain kind of beauty, I want more of that beauty. I don't need 200 different beauties.

I was raised in a very happy nest by very happy people, and I like to think that those are enough ingredients to make me succeed at Dior.

There are people who, if they see something in couture that they perceive as ready-to-wear, they're in shock.

My inspiration is endless; I can't define it. It is a constant flow and evolution. In general, I'm taking it from everywhere. People get nervous when they walk with me, as I'll see something and suddenly have to text it to myself.

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.

I was growing up in the New Wave period, but that wasn't allowed in school. I remember moments when they wouldn't let four people dressed in black stand together on the playground.

I don't have so many things in the fashion world that interest me. It's probably because I am so deeply into it. Often when you go very deep into something, you also discover what it's about, and you understand it better. With the art world, I still have a lot of curiosity.

I'd like to see fashion slow down a bit. What freaks me out about fashion today is the speed - the speed of consuming, the speed of ideas. When fashion moves so fast, it takes away something I always loved, which is the idea that fashion should be slightly elusive. Hard to grasp, hard to find.

I am always attracted to the moments when a person who is associated with a certain message, image or sensibility evolves. I am very interested in how audiences respond to that maturation and absorb the evolution.

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.

L.A. interests me, the whole band scene and relaxed carefree feel, but it does not mean you have to dress like a hippy.

Our society wants things to grow, and our society wants things to become bigger and bigger. Everything has to be put under the spotlight.

My own brand will stand or fall because of me. Dior won't fall if I fall. It will also still stand if I'm not there. I'm coming in there, and it's like a - I don't know the English word - like a passage.

We Belgians love when we can go to L.A. because the city is amazing and the climate is fantastic.

Until I was eighteen, I did not know that you could study fashion design or art. I really didn't know. I already had my nose in the art world; I was already looking at things, but I didn't really get it that you could study that because my school was a very different environment.

We all know and we all perceive Christian Dior in a very specific way.

What I've been conscious of, from the beginning is that I can't be Jil Sander.

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.

Somewhere, in some city in America, someone is wearing my clothes, and I'm happy with that.

People who don't know me look at my world as something very hard-core, and I don't feel it that way. It's not what attracts me.

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.

There's a very different kind of psychology going on in the fashion scene than in art. When artists connect to a system because they want to make a living, it's their own choice. In fashion, designers don't have that choice.

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. Christian Dior wanted.

The fashion world doesn't know the word 'stop,' so you have to make sure there are sublime moments every day.

The fashion thing is something I do, and yes, it is definitely also becoming a part of myself and my personality. It also doesn't really feel like a job, either: it's a dream or a passion or something.

I'm fascinated by the way Diane Arbus saw things. She came from this fashion background and then twisted it.

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 something else. I always knew I am more of a jumper.

In the nineties, it was common to see people who expressed themselves through one designer - the Jil Sander woman, the Martin Margiela woman. You saw her on the street, and you knew who she was.

We are very excited to re-launch the collaboration with Fred Perry. We have great appreciation for the heritage of the brand as well as their dynamism in guiding the brand towards the future. Their openness to create synergies between both our brands will bring interesting, creative results.

L.A. interests me, the whole band scene and relaxed carefree feel, but it does not mean you have to dress like a hippy.

My ideas for the next collection always happen a couple of months before the show. I have learned to shut up and not bother my assistants with it.

I'm not an isolated person. The more I connect to people, the more I have the feeling that things work.

For me, Warhol made so much sense.

Collage – SS13 offers a very controlled and pure do-it-yourself attitude. The collection shows a juxtaposition of very different materials, prints and colours, therefore giving the wearer a possibility to combine the garments in different ways.

I like very much to put on fashion shows.

In my opinion, Christian Dior was never, ever theatre.

I have so much respect for John [Galliano]s technical skill and the fantasy, its just something that I dont find relevant now, especially when it restricts a woman, because in every other area they have so much freedom.

My mother was a cleaning lady all her life.

I don't find it difficult anymore, because these days, Raf is only men and Dior is only women. I found it much more complicated when I was doing Jil Sander for men and women. It wasn't that it was the same, but I'm specific about where I want to go, and when you suddenly have to do two men's collections in the same moment, that was more difficult.

I wanted an idea of the future, a new femininity. I wanted you to feel that you wouldn't quite know where these women were coming from and where they were going to.

The Dior heritage is so broad. It has a strong presence in the work. So, when people have to define it quickly, it's, like, the Bar jacket and the movement and the luxury and the Belle Époque and so much more.

I'm very scared sometimes that fashion might attack its own magic by the amount of exposure,

I don't see Dior as something that could become mine. I see it as a dialogue with the women who wear it. I want to stay connected to them rather than to an abstract brand.

I always try to connect with what's happening in the world-reality, modernity, the 21st century, all that - and with Jil it started to feel very disconnected from the outside and how women were looking at fashion, experiencing fashion, interpreting fashion.

It was a challenge for me to see how I could deal with that at Jil, and I had a lot of doubt about it. I wondered if maybe it was just better to do your own thing in the long run, like an artist.

Sometimes it’s more a matter of collaboration which matters in a collection.

When artists connect to a system because they want to make a living, it's their own choice. In fashion, designers don't have that choice. I know everybody mentions Azzedine Alaïa, but he's been going for a long time in the system - showing to people, selling to clients - and I think it's admirable how he's transformed it into his own system in a way, but it's still a system.

I see my position in that whole Dior construction very differently from my own brand. My own brand will stand or fall because of me. Dior won't fall if I fall. It will also still stand if I'm not there. I'm coming in there and it's like a - I don't know the English word - like a passage.

The psychology for the person who's actually doing it is completely different. I think I probably needed to put that [hired-hand] psychology in my own head to be able to do the job. Otherwise it would just be too scary. People outside make it much bigger than me. I'm not saying in my head, "Oh, my god, what an amazing idea!" It scares me if I would do that.

And even being in the middle of it, at the LVMH group with Dior, there are certain parts of it that I'm just not really in, because it's not in me or my nature. The whole scene around it, the events, the photography ... It's never really been my thing. But I don't take a critical position on people who are very much about that either.

My own show with Sterling Ruby, for example, seems like such a huge disconnection from Dior couture, but then I think, yeah, in both collections there was a very strong focus on the human hand and the actual work of people making garments. So in that sense, they were completely related. But I didn't realize that during the process.

Robert Gober, for example. He doesn't seem like somebody who is just going to show in a gallery that asks him to show. He's just making his work, and when he's ready, he's going to show it.

Becoming a fashion designer is agreeing with the fact that what you experience or what you see as free is also connected to a system. Does that mean giving up your freedom? I still don't know the answer. There's a very different kind of psychology going on in the fashion scene than in art.

I would prefer to use the word free. I think the Dior thing is so much freer. There was not so much free about Jil's way of working.

Well, my own men's collection always felt very free back in the days before Jil. Once you make it this kind of dialogue with other people, with a fashion show and clients and whatever, it becomes something else. Free meets not so free.

I think it's different in fashion, because even if I would be an outsider, I would still be in the middle of the whole world of contemporary fashion. But it's interesting to think what outsider fashion could be. Does it mean to be completely disconnected from the regular system or just disconnected style-wise?

You do what you do. Or you do what you have to do. I don't know how to explain it better. I think that in the moment, you can't see connections, but sometimes afterwards you do.

But overall I want to make sure people fall in love with the clothes and that they are satisfied

It felt wrong for me to stay totally connected to that very strict way of approaching the heritage - what it can be, what it cannot be. That was also the period where I really thought, "No, let's open it up."

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. The difference is that once I was in Antwerp only doing two men's shows a year. And the weird thing is I thought I was busy then.

I've always seen myself as a small entity, and it will always stay like that. I'm not changing. But I think the big challenge for me taking on the Dior thing is to see how I can connect that to such a huge institution.

My aim is a very modern Dior, but at the end of the day, I also look back,

I find it fascinating to see the fact that women want to buy things that they see on men.

In fashion, general people will look to the piece itself. [Some designers] concentrate on, 'How can I make this seam look special?' or 'What am I going to do with that button so it looks interesting?' I am not interested in that. At the moment, I am more interested in the shape and the form. I have a big desire to make clothes without defining them.

When it's only clothes, that is not satisfying enough for me. I don't think I could do this for 10, 20 years if that was all. It also has to be about a psychology or a mentality or a concept.

The fashion world doesn't know the word stop, so you have to make sure there are sublime moments every day.

The future, for me, is romantic, I don’t understand people who say the past is romantic. Romantic, for me, is something you don’t know yet, something you can dream about, something unknown and mystical. That I find fascinating.

I’m very attracted to things that I can’t define.

I dont want to show clothes, I want to show my attitude, my past, present and future. I use memories and future visions and try to place them in todays world.

The Chanel woman? I don't even need to see; I smell her from round the corner.