Collaborations can generate amazing new things, but also bring up the best of each contributor. This might be the case in one of the most exciting fashion-art-collaborations. After seeing so much fashion design displayed in art institutions over the past two years, no wonder that the line starts to blur. The Fashion Weeks of the world seem to acknowledge that (last summer the label Julian Zigerli presented its collaboration with the painter Katharina Grosse, for example). The Fall 2014 menswear collection by the Belgian designer Raf Simons and the LA-based artist Sterling Ruby shown at the Paris Fashion Week recently, seemed to be the perfect designer-artist collaboration!
This is their second coming together, as they already worked together in 2009, where Simons used denim bleached by Ruby to create a capsule collection of denim jeans and jackets. Experiencing the creative process for the second time, this year’s outcome seem to keep the familiar elements, such as bleached denim, but also became a bit more radical. Simons and Ruby approached fabric and garment like canvases. The collection creates a feeling of obsessive youth: Bomber jackets were covered with orange stripes and galactic stickers, reminiscent of the collage scraps in Ruby’s BC series, whilst jumpers featured the words ‘father’ and stretched out hands. An absolute highlight: the gigantic oversized-boots! Even though our (virtual) life might be all over the Tumbl’s out there, Simons and Ruby proved that homemade patches are still the real throw back to teenage years.
