Designer Raf Simons has just delivered his debut collection for Calvin Klein, at the company headquarters at 205 West 39th Street in New York.
Simons’s first show since leaving Christian Dior in October 2015, this new autumn/winter 2017 offering proves that the time away from the limelight has done nothing to diminish his shine.
In an homage to Americana, Simons offered trousers and shirts in Levi Strauss-inspired workman’s denim, over boots tipped with cowboy steel toes. Men’s and women’s jackets were made from, or lined with, traditional patchwork quilts, and there was even a skirt carved from a vintage United States flag.
Women’s coats consisted of checked weaves sandwiched under a layer of see-through plastic, with clutches emblazoned with the company’s address dangling from necks. Perhaps in a subtle dig at President Trump’s Make American Great again campaign rally, the New York address was printed above a “Made in China” logo.
Whatever the political leanings of the collection, one thing was made clear — after the overbearing atmosphere of Paris and Dior, from which Simons is said to have resigned citing lack of control, this new look towards America, and the land of possibilities, tells us all that, at long last, Raf Simons is back.
smaisey@thenational.ae
