Interview

Launch Mediaplayer »

Raf Simons is the future. Still the future. The 40-year-old Belgian designer has long been the headlight for radical menswear. Throughout the '90s and '00s, his eponymous label showed how innovative design can embrace new technologies and fabrics and -rethink traditional structures. In 2005, Simons turned from rogue independent to the man behind a megabrand, taking the reins of the men's and -women's lines at Jil Sander. That label has always been known for its clean, utilitarian silhouettes, a precision that seems to particularly suit Simons, who, for the Fall 2008 -womenswear collection, put the tailors on the dresses and the dressmakers on the tailoring. It was Simons way of again unsettling how we think of clothes.
Simons has many fans well beyond the closed doors of high fashion. Take Kanye West, the hip-hop superstar who has pretty much restyled the music world over the past few years. He's never hidden his interest in fashion. When West went looking for inspiration in developing his upcoming sportswear line, Pastelle, he had the good sense to check out Simons. Their upbringings couldn't have been more different, but Simons and West are both fearless individualists. Here they talk about style, music, and why it's good to be the outsider on the playground. We started off asking them what they were like as children.

RAF SIMONS: I was born in this very small village in Belgium. It wasn't really a creative environment. In school, creating was kept away from young people. The village was so small there was no outlet except for one little record store. I think that is where it started for me-just picking up records. I'm 40 years old, so it was LPs. The first LP I ever bought-you're going to be shocked-was Bob Marley. Then I switched to Kraftwerk, Joy Division, and that kind of stuff. I was a bit dark at that time because I felt so isolated. But not only me, there were some other young people who felt that way. We loved to dress in black. 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. Then, before I graduated, I remember finding this book, and there was one page about industrial design. Basically, I ended up going to school for that. At that time there was a big boom going on with fashion in Belgium. The more I looked, the more I became interested. Before that I never even thought to become a fashion designer or anything like that. I started feeling that work when I was 19 years old, but I didn't do my first collection until I was 27. I wanted to finish my education in industrial design first. My parents are very holy to me. They never said, "You should do this," or "You should do that." My dad had to go in the army when he was 16, and he stayed there. My mom was a cleaning lady her whole life. The only thing they said to me was: "Take it seriously. Do what you what you believe in, but take it seriously." So the fourth year, I had to go for an internship. I went to Walter Van Beirendonck. I knocked on his door, and I was super scared-because I had nothing to do with fashion. But he was interested. He had absolutely zero interest in all of the fashion work I had faked to impress him. He just went straight to my industrial-design stuff. He said, "I really want you to come because, next to the fact that I am a fashion designer, I have this presentation in Paris and objects to make. I'm not a traditional designer." I ended up doing that with him, and he took me to Paris, and I saw my first show, which was the third show for Martin Margiela. Nothing else in fashion has had such a big impact on me. It was a show where half the audience cried, including myself. I was just like, "What! This is fashion?" Only at that point did I understand what fashion could be or what it could mean to people. It was the "white" show, where all the models wore dresses in white and transparent plastic. Margiela had no money at the time, so the Maison ended up going to a black neighborhood in Paris and asking if they could use a children's playground for the show. The parents said, "Yes, you can have the playground, but we want our children to be able to see it." So little black children were standing with the audience in the front row. The children started to run over to the models, and they picked them up and held them around their necks.

KANYE WEST: For me, I realized the psychology behind having Jordans growing up-what it meant culturally, or what it meant to be a child just trying to fit in. When my parents divorced, my mother moved to Chicago, and my father stayed in Maryland. My mother lived in an all-black neighborhood. My father lived in an all-white neighborhood. When I got to Maryland, I had to adjust to a more affluent neighborhood than what I was used to in Chicago. Then when I went back to Chicago, I had to readjust to that. Then my mother and I moved to China for a year when I was in fifth grade. I had to adjust to a place where there was nobody my age, not to mention any black kids out there. Those were scary situations, but it made me able to open up my mind to other cultures and be accepting. And that is the greatest blessing, to have those experiences, because I can adapt to other cultures and still be who I am. So you see, with my style, there is a bit of Paris and a bit of Japan and a bit of the suburbs. A lot of people's style looks very specific to one region.