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A R T & D E S I G N ( / C AT E G O RY / A R T - D E S I G N ) March 24, 2017

Raf Simons: Material Boy

The designer talks about his new Kvadrat textiles, the shock of colour and how ar t is
like drinking Coke Zero

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On a very blustery afternoon in New York City, Raf Simons is wearing one of the covetable
super-sized sweaters from his Twin Peaks -inspired menswear collection. The rich chocolate
brown one is moth-gnawed and dotted with Boy Scout-ish patches. Simons has had these
jumbo jumpers in steady rotation since debuting them in January 2016, but todays wardrobe
choice is slightly more apt.

Were at the National Academy of Designs long-time home a Beaux-Arts townhouse on Fifth
Avenue where Simons has chosen to reveal his fourth collection with Kvadrat (Europes most
esteemed textile manufacturer) in a special furniture installation. Hes made use of the
mansions slightly Lynchian neo-classical flourishes to present the work in an unexpected
context.
PHOTO: BRIAN FERRY

This is the first time that Im working with [Kvadrat] on something where I was very specific
about the environment I wanted to present it in, Simons says of the installation. Ria, his new
textile, upholsters mid-century couches, ottomans, chairs, and curtains in a variety of
contrasting hues. Its even been used to reimagine the iconic Sacco, the original beanbag
chair.

It just felt wrong for me to go in a clean gallery and look too much at the pieces as a kind of
design piece in itself. I like the idea of taking more of a curatorial position in how we
proposed the fabric. Not only in terms of a suggestion of how it can be on the piece, but how
the piece can be in an environment, and what the pieces together become.
Simons has been working with Kvadrat since his days at the helm of Jil Sander, initially drawn
to the vibrant colours of the Danish companys materials. He was very excited when he saw
us as a resource for doing something unusual, says Kvadrat CEO Anders Byriel. Simonss first
collaborative textiles were revealed on the runway, in the 2014 menswear collection he
produced with artist Sterling Ruby.
Subsequent Kvadrat upholstery designs featured in the designers Dior ready-to-wear and
couture collections, as well as in his eponymous label. In a way, we have been a unique
source for Raf, Byriel explains, nodding to the dierences in pace and process between
fashion and furniture textile production. Many of our things are constructed to last, at the very
minimum, 10, 15, or 20 years. There is more performance, and more materiality.

RAF SIMONS AND ANDERS BYRIEL. PHOTO: ANTON CORBIJN

Ria is the ultimate culmination of both worlds. Created by weaving two tones of richly textured
yarn through a contrasting base colour, the textile evokes Pointillist painters approach to light
and shadow. But rather than aiming for Georges Seurat and Paul Signacs micro-precision,
Simons achieves a more liberated, romantic sensibility. And despite its late-19th century
inspiration, Ria exemplifies the kind of contemporary that both Kvadrat and Simons do so well
a fresh impressionism you want to touch and feel.
Today, the work of any designer is so often based on its aesthetic (often because the clothes
or fabrics are seen from a distance at shows, in magazine pages, or online), so we spoke
with Simons about living in the material world.

You of ten draw inspiration from ar t or music. How do you begin translating these
ideas into tangible materials?

I am very often inspired by nature as well. I look around a lot for colour in nature. Not only in
nature, actually; also in the street. Outdoors, lets say. I never would go and start looking at
imagery online for colour, because it needs to be the real thing. I pick up everything that I run
into that I find interesting. Sometimes its a very small little piece the wrapping of a candy
or something because Im fascinated with how far you can go purely by the use of colour
and the juxtaposition of colour.
I had a period in fashion where I was so fed up with how everything was so defined, for so
many years, by the use of a neutral colour that I tried to really kind of attack that by using the
opposite as a reaction. Later, it became more about juxtaposition. Someone like Ellsworth
Kelly was always an inspiration in terms of the juxtaposition of colour.

For this [Kvadrat collection], I was obviously looking a lot at Pointillist paintings, but I didnt
really want to go the way we know them. They are very figurative. Even if they are soft, very
often they represent something. A landscape, literally, or trees, people, whatever. I didnt want
to do that. I like the idea that [the textile] felt organic, but not figurative. That gave a lot of
possibility with the colours. Sometimes the contrast is hard, sometimes the contrast is very soft.
Some of the [textiles], you see them together and think theyre the same, but theyre not. So
you could create your own kind of landscape, if you want to.

Tell me about this environment. The floors, lighting, and red fabrics in the other
room remind me a lit tle of Twin Peaks .

Ah yes, The Red Room, as you see it. This room [were in] was also supposed to be a little bit
2001: Space Odyssey a weird juxtaposition of sculpture. I wanted to do dierent
suggestions in terms of how [the textile] could look on a big surface, how could it look on
something clean and stretched, how could it look on something completely dierent? How can
you get certain items that are so well-known in our world of design and kind of destabilise
them? Maybe the wrong word. Take them out of their comfort zone. The Sacco, for example.
We all know them in [synthetic] leather and a primary colour. It becomes something
completely dierent in this kind of fabric. I like the idea of creating a weird juxtaposition
between colour and form, or colour and colour, material and shape, piece and environment.
PHOTO: BRIAN FERRY

I didnt want to make a domestic suggestion, but I also didnt want it to become a gallery-arty
thing either. So just trying to find a new way. Like this room. This hard black and white
checkerboard that makes such a weird contradiction with [the Kvadrat pieces]. The dirty walls,
the marble edges, the figurative sculpture, the Noguchi paper lamps. The previous
presentations were sometimes very hard. I didnt want to have something that felt technical.

Do you find yourself drawing on your background in industrial design when you re
working on these kinds of collaborations?

I think the only thing but I let it very much in [Kvadrats] hands is that the technical
aspects are quite hardcore. Each textile takes between one and three years to develop. In
fashion sometimes we develop like 50 fabrics in a month for an upcoming show. But its not
with the same responsibility. Everything that goes out on the level that [Kvadrat] is in, which is
the highest, its supposed to last, and not only from an aesthetic point of view. What Herms
is in fashion, [Kvadrat] is for me for upholstery and the furniture business. And they have a
very beautiful attitude. They are producers of fabric, but they connect to artists and architects
from unknown to known, young, old. We are now some years later and it feels very natural.

So in that sense, its not that I can just do whatever Im interested in, because if it will not go
through the quality tests, it will just be a no, which is also great. I like that [Kvadrat] are very
technical, but the materials dont look technical. They always have an authentic kind of look
and authentic kind of feel. The worst thing for me in interior design is when the fibres and the
fabrics feel very non-natural and technical. I dont like that at all.

PHOTO: BRIAN FERRY

What materials do you dislike working with?

Im always scared of somebody asking me, What do you not like? because everything is an
evolution, so it might come back to me if I feel its right. But, for example, when things go
more plasticky. And yet in that time you could almost call it plastic time during the 60s
and the 70s, designers made very strong suggestions for living environments. Joe Colombo
with Visiona, this whole kind of world where there was a lot of experimenting with plastic.

Its just a personal thing that I dont like to sit on something that has plastic, but I think the
suggestion was interesting because it was more connected to environment. It was more
placed in the idea of how we live our lives. In the 60s, we were dreaming about the future
and the space age, the possibility of travelling to the moon, inventions. And out of that came
all that kind of space age furniture. First, romantic, and afterwards quite liberated.

More and more, I think that the design world becomes very object-oriented always about
designing a piece, an object. Its not a critique, but what I kind of miss a little bit is the
suggestions from people actually responsible for all these designs to place it more in the
reality of our lives what it is about, or what it could possibly be about. Because it can be
anything. It can be reality, it can be a future dream. Now, I think, its done by decorators. And
I just keep wondering how one person a designer, a furniture designer could push it
further. Visiona and Joe Colombo is for me the biggest example. I just think it was incredible
how he kind of imagined, for himself and the people he was designing for, new living. New
ways of living, new possibilities.
Are there any materials from your childhood that you remember finding
compelling?
Not really, if I have to be honest about the environment in which I grew up. My childhood, up
until I was 16, was very nature nature nature. Animals, farms, small streets. But I was living in
an environment that did not know anything that was the way we define culture. Galleries,
boutiques, cinema, theatre didnt know what it all was. Until Jan Hoet, the Belgian curator,
curated a show called Chambres dAmis , and that was a click a whole dierent kind of
moment for me [in 1986, Hoets staged an art exhibition, but not at a museum, instead
mounting artworks throughout 59 private homes in the Belgian town of Ghent. All homes were
then open to guests whod paid for a $6 ticket. When he was 16, Raf saw Chambres dAmis
advertised on TV and travelled by train to see it].

People always ask, Why do you collect? Why is it important for you and your environment?
Maybe that was the trigger, because my first connection to art was immediately in a domestic
context. I only discovered afterwards that art was usually presented in museums, and I still,
kind of, think the best circumstance Ive ever seen it in was what he did. It would be like Bruce
Nauman in that family, some other artists in that family. Its still very fascinating for me.
John Waters talks about his ar t works Mike Kellys, Cy Twomblys as his
roommates and about what it s really like to live with pieces ar t.

Its very inspiring to me to connect to the thought processes of other people. And its not
always about that specific work. If I have Sterling around me, its because Im really interested
in his thinking and it feels good to have that around me. The same for other artists work I live
with. Sometimes I know them and sometimes I dont. Sometimes they are my generation and
sometimes not. I havent read the John Waters book, but its like you say: interesting because
theyre all dierent kind of characters in a way.

Sometimes Im scared to talk about it because people can also think youre pretentious when
you always connect to art and youre not in the art world. But I cannot explain it. Its
something I am connected to since I was 16. Its like breathing air, or drinking Coke Zero. Its
a daily thing, an automatism. If I have a moment, Im looking at art sites to inform myself
about shows and reviews because I have less and less possibility to go around. Of course,
going around is the best experience.

PHOTO: ANTON CORBIJN

Does it bother you that someone may be so influenced by your work but never
have the chance to touch it?

Well, with Calvin underwear now that could be possible! To be really honest, the attraction
and the reason why I came to Calvin is because it has the highest and the lowest and
everything in between, so you can reach out to everybody. Which, in high fashion, is not
always easy. It was not something that was possible at Dior, for example. It is possible at
Calvin Klein.

I remember when I was a young kid not 16, more like 19 or 20 I was obsessed with
Helmut Lang. I couldnt aord it, but I was connected. That was my world. Fashion-wise, it was
my world. And at one point, I could maybe buy a shirt, but I was completely a Helmut Lang
kid. Its more about how you connect to it in your mind, I think. Of course you want some
connection for yourself, but some brands its just not possible. You could not even buy a lace
of a sneaker, its just too expensive.

I spoke with Willy [ Vanderperre] before his recent show at Red Hook Labs, and
there was a similar motivation. He made stickers and pins and patches in limited
editions so that they were still ar t objec ts, but accessible to young people.

[Willy and I] are very close, so its always one way or another about having a connection to
youth. Like the Sacco, the ultimate teenage element. Back in the days when I was studying
industrial design, I wanted a Sacco so badly but I could not aord it. So I would just copy the
pattern and make one. Its nice, you know, this kind of do it yourself. I am the same with my
brand. If I can be inspiring for kids, Im already super happy. If that means that if I do a black
coat and they find one in a vintage store and they tape it up, I love it! Thats interesting to
me.

k vadratrafsimons.com (ht tp://www.k vadratrafsimons.com/)

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