Raf joins Prada in ‘co-creative’ position
ITALIAN fashion icon Prada announced on Sunday they have appointed Belgian designer Raf Simons as their co-creative director. Prada said Simons, the Dior and Calvin Klien vetern who is considered one of his generation’s most talented designers, would take up his post on April 2.
Miuccia Prada, 70, unveiled the surprise news on the fifth day of a Milan Fashion Week despite disruptions by a clutch of coronavirus cases barely an hour away from the event.
“I am not here to announce my retirement to you nor my succession, on the contrary, this is a new breath of fresh air for me, a very exciting new adventure,” Prada said.
“I’m probably going to have to work even harder than before,” she added, looking visibly elated at the prospect of welcoming Simons aboard.
“We hold each other in high regard, we respect each other and we are very much looking forward to seeing where this collaboration will take us,” said Prada.
A statement said that Simons, 52, would have “equal responsibilities for creative input and decision-making.”
The pair’s first collection will be for spring/summer 2021 and is to be presented in Milan in September.
Simons noted that “our relationship started one year before I took creative direction of Jil Sander in 2005”.
Since then, he and Prada have maintained a “dialogue about everything, about fashion, about politics, contents,” the Belgian designer added.
Simons said they share the belief that “creativity still is at the core of fashion”, and want to work out how designers can “together question their own position in the fashion system”.
Patrizio Bertelli, Miuccia
Prada’s husband and company chief executive, said: “It is the first time in the history of fashion that two such important stylists and of such statures will be working together.
“The Prada group has always been capable of anticipating global changes in fashion and we are still showing as much today,” he told a hastily convened press conference.
Prada said in a statement that the new partnership “is born from a deep reciprocal respect and from an open conversation – it is a mutual decision, proposed and determined by both parties” who would seek to be innovative and “push boundaries”.
The f i r m added t hat Prada a nd Si mons would br i ng “a new approach to t he ver y def i nit ion of creat ive d i rect ion for a fa sh ion bra nd – a st rong cha l lenge to t he idea of si ng u la r it y of creat ive aut horsh ip.”
In addition to heading Jil Sander, Simons ons created his own brand, rand,
Raf by Raf. af.
In December 2018 he left eft Calvin Klein, where here he had been n chief creative officer, after the e firm alluded to differences es in their respecspective creative eative visions.