The artisanal work of Raf Simons at the House of Dior is something we've tracked since the designer debuted his first haute couture collection in 2012. Ahead of the impending spring/summer 2016 season we take a glance back at last season which inspired our latest September Issue story, Making Tracks, photographed by Julien Vallon and styled by Marjorie Chanut, as model Milena Feurer showcases the autumn/winter 2015 collection from Dior.
Last season we referred to the Dior muse as a new age power woman. The focus on the autumn/winter 2015 season - as ever - was all about newness and the appeal of house codes. For creative director Raf Simons, that meant transporting the Dior woman away from tired iterations, and instead introducing her to a fresh avant-garde mindset. Simons's foray in print and abstract pattern wasn't unknown terriority for the designer, however. Over the past few seasons he has proved his potential as a fashion encyclopedia of sorts - referencing the old and the new, reinterpreting the classic bar jacket and forceably changing up how we, the consumer, approach haute couture as elevated streetwear.
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When everyone was vibing Sixties eclecticism, Simons chose to approach the decade with a millennial attitude. Amid the amoeba motifs and plastic mesh explorations Simons married a sharp sense of graphicism – seen in the fully realised printed jumpsuits - with familiar archival silhouettes. A new riff on the Fifties belted skirts for instance, was reimagined in houndstooth and slashed at the hem, producing a ra-ra kick as models stalked the runway. The jacquard knits and tattoo-embroidered silks of last season fed into looks dominated by colour. Simons offered archival hues of vermilion, ochre and chartreuse alongside fresher shades of turquoise, cream and baby pink – counterbalancing the graphic nature of the clothes.
Simons brought this offbeat aesthetic into his Cruise 2016 presentation too - held at the impossibly strange Le Palais Bulles 'bubble house' owned by designer Pierre Cardin. In his attempt to forge Dior's Parisian elegance with the exotic mediterranean vibe of Monaco - which incidentally was the location of the house - Simons again re-referenced his past, drawing on autumn/winter 2015's abstract motifs and transforming them with watercolour washes, ideal for the coastline backdrop.
By Christopher Prince
