Raf Simons Quotes

And even being in the middle of it, at the LVMH group with Dior, there are certain parts of it that I'm just not really in, because it's not in me or my nature. The whole scene around it, the events, the photography ... It's never really been my thing. But I don't take a critical position on people who are very much about that either.

I never really have to sit at a desk thinking, 'What should I do now?' It doesn't work like that for me, and it never has. My thinking process is constant.

We Belgians love when we can go to L.A. because the city is amazing and the climate is fantastic.

I think it's different in fashion, because even if I would be an outsider, I would still be in the middle of the whole world of contemporary fashion. But it's interesting to think what outsider fashion could be. Does it mean to be completely disconnected from the regular system or just disconnected style-wise?

Antwerp literally was a trash hole, but fashion changed that. The designers there were extreme, and their work was hard to understand. But now, people from all over the world come to Antwerp to shop.

My challenge is to find a beautiful balance: to make women beautiful, to make a woman dream to wear a beautiful outfit.

For me, Warhol made so much sense.

I am always attracted to the moments when a person who is associated with a certain message, image or sensibility evolves. I am very interested in how audiences respond to that maturation and absorb the evolution.

Our society wants things to grow, and our society wants things to become bigger and bigger. Everything has to be put under the spotlight.

I know this independence is what people like most about my brand.

Fashion is such an octopus. You're connected to so many people: suppliers, pattern makers, production teams, marketing teams, vendors.

If I see a fashion show with literal influences, it doesn't make me think any more. It doesn't make me dream.

We all know and we all perceive Christian Dior in a very specific way.

I was raised in a very happy nest by very happy people, and I like to think that those are enough ingredients to make me succeed at Dior.

My own brand will stand or fall because of me. Dior won't fall if I fall. It will also still stand if I'm not there. I'm coming in there, and it's like a - I don't know the English word - like a passage.

My own show with Sterling Ruby, for example, seems like such a huge disconnection from Dior couture, but then I think, yeah, in both collections there was a very strong focus on the human hand and the actual work of people making garments. So in that sense, they were completely related. But I didn't realize that during the process.

We are very excited to re-launch the collaboration with Fred Perry. We have great appreciation for the heritage of the brand as well as their dynamism in guiding the brand towards the future. Their openness to create synergies between both our brands will bring interesting, creative results.

Dress codes and gestures and attitudes have always inspired me, as has youth culture in general, although now I question it more. If you analyze youth cultures over history, there has always been something strict about them - you have to be like this or like that.

Berlin is in a state of transition. There are lots of people who don't stay here. They pass through. They might not 'clean up,' but they mature. It is a city where people spend a significant time in their lives, and then they move on.

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.

I'm very scared sometimes that fashion might attack its own magic by the amount of exposure.

In the nineties, it was common to see people who expressed themselves through one designer - the Jil Sander woman, the Martin Margiela woman. You saw her on the street, and you knew who she was.

You do what you do. Or you do what you have to do. I don't know how to explain it better. I think that in the moment, you can't see connections, but sometimes afterwards you do.

In fashion design, you can divide people into two groups. You have people who come with an aesthetic that is there forever, even if it evolves. Then you have people I call 'jumpers.' One season it can be this; the next season it's completely something else. I always knew I am more of a jumper.

What I've been conscious of, from the beginning is that I can't be Jil Sander.

You cannot have adoration without being criticized.

I'm not an isolated person. The more I connect to people, the more I have the feeling that things work.

There's a very different kind of psychology going on in the fashion scene than in art. When artists connect to a system because they want to make a living, it's their own choice. In fashion, designers don't have that choice.

The psychology for the person who's actually doing it is completely different. I think I probably needed to put that [hired-hand] psychology in my own head to be able to do the job. Otherwise it would just be too scary. People outside make it much bigger than me. I'm not saying in my head, "Oh, my god, what an amazing idea!" It scares me if I would do that.

In my opinion, Christian Dior was never, ever theatre.

Fashion is so mass-produced now; I hope there will come a refocus on how people see couture. And I would also hope for a new focus on the craft.

Becoming a fashion designer is agreeing with the fact that what you experience or what you see as free is also connected to a system. Does that mean giving up your freedom? I still don't know the answer. There's a very different kind of psychology going on in the fashion scene than in art.

The future, for me, is romantic, I don't understand people who say the past is romantic. Romantic, for me, is something you don't know yet, something you can dream about, something unknown and mystical. That I find fascinating.

I'm fascinated by the way Diane Arbus saw things. She came from this fashion background and then twisted it.

Computers let people avoid people, going out to explore. It's so different to just open a website instead of looking at a Picasso in a museum in Paris.

I am somebody who focuses on a dialogue between generations - that's the drive of my work. I believe the young generation take the power; they'll take over at one point, but the older generation, they'll push it away only because of the fear. I'm the opposite; I'm curious.

L.A. interests me, the whole band scene and relaxed carefree feel, but it does not mean you have to dress like a hippy.

I'm a designer, and for me, things are always evolving, and such evolution is necessary.

I'd like to see fashion slow down a bit. What freaks me out about fashion today is the speed - the speed of consuming, the speed of ideas. When fashion moves so fast, it takes away something I always loved, which is the idea that fashion should be slightly elusive. Hard to grasp, hard to find.

As an industrial designer, you design the thing by yourself, and then it goes away from you, whereas fashion is in constant relation to the body and to psychology. It makes it more complicated, and it makes it more challenging.

I like very much to put on fashion shows.

You can instantly spot a Chanel woman, so I want to develop the Dior woman.

I fantasise about what the future could be in terms of aesthetic and psychology. It's the most difficult thing to do because you have to start from the past - your favourite architect, your favourite song - you take it all with you.

I don't see Dior as something that could become mine. I see it as a dialogue with the women who wear it. I want to stay connected to them rather than to an abstract brand.

I'm usually very attracted to things that I can't define. If something's too clear, it's very often not inspiring to me anymore.

When it's only clothes, that is not satisfying enough for me. I don't think I could do this for 10, 20 years if that was all. It also has to be about a psychology or a mentality or a concept.

Unlike fashion, art isn't applied. It doesn't have to serve anybody. It doesn't have to be there for any other reason than to give an impression of what the world is about.

My aim is a very modern Dior, but at the end of the day, I also look back,

But overall I want to make sure people fall in love with the clothes and that they are satisfied

I always try to connect with what's happening in the world-reality, modernity, the 21st century, all that - and with Jil it started to feel very disconnected from the outside and how women were looking at fashion, experiencing fashion, interpreting fashion.

I see there is a lot of behaviour in men's fashion, which is systematic. It's a lot about all these kind of clothes that can be easily combined with each other, and it's less and less, I think, about making a fashion statement.

My dad only ever talked about two things: bicycles and Mercedes.

My point of view is that if I love a certain kind of beauty, I want more of that beauty. I don't need 200 different beauties.

Until I was eighteen, I did not know that you could study fashion design or art. I really didn't know. I already had my nose in the art world; I was already looking at things, but I didn't really get it that you could study that because my school was a very different environment.

Robert Gober, for example. He doesn't seem like somebody who is just going to show in a gallery that asks him to show. He's just making his work, and when he's ready, he's going to show it.