PARIS — Raf Simons drew nods of approval from the fashion cognoscenti on Wednesday night as he shared the stage with his old chum, the California-based artist Sterling Ruby, for the presentation of their co-branded Fall/Winter ’14 menswear collection, which will be sold under the Raf Simons-Sterling Ruby label.
A creepy soundtrack of turning helicopter rotor blades and a man laughing flushed into Pink Floyd’s “Breathe” as models stomped down the runway, stepping through padded rectangular cotton sculptures honed from a stars-and-stripes fabric with two tie-shaped strips hanging down. Channeling a distinctly urban aesthetic, the artsy top-heavy collection paired oversized outerwear with skinny black pants, finished with cartoonish two-tone shoes. Rectangular swatches of fabric, tape printed with slogans like “FATHERS,” and cut-out images of shark jaws, planets and starry skies emblazoned classic trenches and camel hair coats, with accents of colored bands on cuffs and hems recalling poncho stripes.
Surprisingly, there wasn’t a bandana (Ruby's fetish headgear, and one of his art props) in sight, though the artist’s signature bleach stains cropped up as a print on sporty anoraks and parkas.
It proved a harmonious, covetable, surprisingly wearable effort for the duo who in 2008 collaborated on the design of a (since shuttered) Raf Simons store in Tokyo. Simons, who has been collecting Sterling’s work since the beginning of his career, also used denim bleached by the artist for a capsule of jeans and jackets in 2009, and used four canvases by Sterling to create prints for three dresses and a coat in his debut couture collection as creative director of Christian Dior, presented in July 2012.
