Raf Simons Profiles

Raf Simons is a Belgian fashion designer whose career is one of the clearest modern examples of a designer carrying one language across very different houses. Beginning in furniture design, he launched his own menswear label in 1995. In April 2012 he was announced as the creative director at Christian Dior. On October 22, 2015 he resigned from Christian Dior. On August 2, 2016, Simons was announced as the new chief creative officer at Calvin Klein. This profiles page tells that career in order: the furniture-design beginnings, the 1995 label, the Dior years, and the move to Calvin Klein. Of all the pages in this series, this is the one the others depend on.

The biography searches in the references gather the wider career coverage, and the designer's official website is linked there as well. The collections, runway and news pages in this series file the fashion work the career produced.

Illustrative image created for this guide — an artistic impression, not this designer's own garments.

Furniture Design and the 1995 Label

Simons began in furniture design, and the starting point matters: a furniture designer thinks in structure, proportion and use before decoration, and that order of thinking stayed with him when the material changed from furniture to clothing. The menswear label he launched in 1995 was built on it — clothes considered as designed objects, with form and proportion doing the expressive work.

The label made his name in menswear, and it is still the foundation the later appointments rest on: the houses that hired him were hiring the language the label had established. The collections page in this series files that language season by season; this page files the career that produced it.

Dior, Then Calvin Klein

In April 2012 Simons was announced as the creative director at Christian Dior — a menswear designer taking the creative direction of one of the great Paris houses, and one of the most closely watched appointments of its decade. He resigned from Christian Dior on October 22, 2015, closing a tenure the news page in this series covers as part of the running record.

On August 2, 2016, Simons was announced as the new chief creative officer at Calvin Klein — a move from Paris to an American house, with creative responsibility at the top of the company. Read with the collections page, the profile completes its arc: a furniture designer who launched a menswear label in 1995 and carried its language to the creative summit of two of fashion's largest houses.