Raf Simons talks about his collaboration with Kvadrat


Belgian designer Raf Simons, former artistic director of the Jil Sander fashion label and currently creative director of Dior Women, has unveiled his first collection for Danish textile manufacturer Kvadrat


Main picture: Willy Vanderperre

By Cate St.Hill

Belgian designer Raf Simons, former artistic director of the Jil Sander label and currently creative director of Dior Women, has unveiled his first collection for Danish textile manufacturer Kvadrat.

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Photo: Anne Collier

An industrial designer by trade and avid collector of mid-century modern furniture, Simons first discovered the work of Kvadrat while searching for intensely coloured woollen fabrics to use in his collections for Jil Sander.

For this first collection for Kvadrat, Simons chose to offer an alternative to the flat woven textiles commonly used in contemporary upholstery, creating eleven richly textured designs, including a woven mohair with a deep pile reminiscent of sheepskin, a silky fur-like textile and speckled boucle fabrics. The collection was first debuted in January for Simons' own label's menswear show in collaboration with artist Sterling Ruby.

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Here, Raf Simons talks to British author Hettie Judah about the collection and his design inspirations, which range from Hans Wegner and Jean Prouvé, to Charlotte Perriand and more recently, Peter Saville, who is a creative consultant to Kvadrat.

HJ: At the point when you discovered Kvadrat you were at Jil Sander. How did you find out about these textiles?

RS: For the fall 2011 collection I was looking for a fabric that gave the possibility of doing garments that almost stood upright; the women's collection of that season was linked to mid-century modernism when fabrics were much heavier and rougher because that was still in the period after the Second World War. I was thinking of going back to the original feel of all those fabrics, and that brought me to Kvadrat actually -- to an environment, which is completely away from fashion.

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Actually I didn't know about Kvadrat at that time, but some of the fabric people that I worked with had seen their textiles. I think they had discovered Kvadrat in the Milan fair and then found out about the showroom. We visited the showroom, and got their textiles into the Jil Sander collection. It was only when I got their textiles into our office and started to go through them, that I discovered other aspects of Kvadrat that fascinated me so much, such as the colouration, the high quality and the interesting impact of the mélanges (mixed colours). I think their mélanges are incredibly chic; they have a timelessness and a kind of modesty.

The Kvadrat fabrics that I used in that collection are rougher and heavier fabrics than are used in the fashion business. We did a lot of coats in that show that were quite rigid -- the textiles were woven so compactly and there was a certain kind of thickness to them so that they perform almost as if they were contemporary bonded fabrics but they looked more authentic. I think this authenticity was a combination of the fact that they are developed for furniture and that they were grounded in the north -- they had this very specific northern quality to them. That was very attractive to me, because the collection that we were dealing with was very feminine and we were dealing with almost couture-ish aspects from the mid century.

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HJ: How did the idea of a textile collaboration with Kvadrat come about?

RS: They just came and asked me. They contacted me through Peter Saville, their creative consultant. They knew that I did something with their fabrics and they came to Antwerp and we had a meeting and I decided immediately to do it. At that time I had not ever imagined that they would contact me to do a collaboration -- the moment that they did, I immediately felt that yes, I would love to do something with them.

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Photo: Anne Collier

HJ: You mentioned the graphic designer Peter Saville, who is a creative consultant to Kvadrat -- I believe that you two had a prior connection?

RS: My brand is very much rooted in music and a young generation of people being very obsessed with music. I grew up in an environment, which was completely the opposite from culture and cities. The only thing I had in the village was a record store, so my first access to culture was very related to music and very related to the work of Peter Saville because he was working with bands that I was very interested in -- New Order and Joy division for example. Around the year 2000, I did a collection, which was a tribute to the work and the world of Peter Saville. It was like a collaboration -- he didn't do work with me but he gave me access to his archive.

HJ: Do you think much about textiles in the context of furniture?

RS: Actually I look around a lot -- it is something deeply ingrained in me because I trained as an industrial furniture designer so I always follow design very intensely. When I look at the furniture produced by the major manufacturers, I see amazingly beautiful fabrics, but often I think they are very traditional -- in their colouration or in their juxtapositions of colour; there are a lot of grey tones or beige tones.

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Photo: Anne Collier

Or sometimes they become too experimental and you feel that it's not going to last. Often with very modern designs they throw in a lot of synthetic fabrics to make it very glamorous, but to me it starts to look very object-like. It's something I don't like very much in relation to interiors.

That's what annoys me in the furniture business at times, that I think people are either very safe with their colourations or it goes very wrong and they go too experimental -- like silver with purple or something.

I think that one thing that should never be forgotten when we think of fabric in relation to interiors is that whole domestic feeling. Whether you have a design orientation, an architectural orientation or you have something much more cosy and small and domestic. I think fabric in relation to interiors should relate to your body. I could not sit on a piece of furniture and feel comfortable at home when it's this new, high-tech, shiny, glam-impact fabric, it just doesn't feel right. It's something I think that Danish design never had -- Danish design always had that warmth to it, that human aspect.

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HJ: You mentioned Hans Wegner -- what historical inspirations from the design world did you have in working on this collection?

RS: I have a lifetime passion for a period of design creation -- whether it's fashion, architecture or furniture -- grounded in the mid century. It has evolved over all the years that I have been active as a designer, now in fashion, but in the early days in relation to furniture and as a collector of design, furniture, things that surround you in your domestic environment.

I always liked the idea of the mid century period when people were dreaming about the future but there was still this kind of strong obsession with durability. I think that most things that were designed by amazing people in the 1950s and 1960s, they have really survived time in such a beautiful way.
It made me think a lot about working with Kvadrat, because a lot of the design that we were talking about was Danish design, which was very powerful in that period. It has this beautiful balance between a modernist approach and the romance of that period. The 1950s and 60s were very romantic decades -- people had a strong belief in the future but they came out of the war, so there was still this modesty to them. There was a lot more happening in the 1950s and 60s, and I think that's why I'm so stuck to it still.

There were some people that were quite inspiring to me such as the French architect- designer Jean Royère; I'm extremely obsessed and interested in his work because he was the one and only male dominating design figure at that time who was also daring to be very feminine -- very feminine in the choice of his colouration, very feminine in the language of form -- then you would have somebody like Hans wegner who would dare to be very experimental but really rooted in the idea of quality and modesty at the same time.

You would have people like Perriand and Prouvé who were fusing the idea of industrialising processes with the idea of domestic and quite avant-garde-ish design but very socially aware: doing a lot of things relating to the public environment and schools and institutional buildings. I think that most of these people had a quality to them that is so lasting and so in balance with their time that even 50 years later it still feels so relevant.

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HJ: Can we talk about designing the collection, and how you went about designing a textile collection?

RS: We started with strong inspiration and a lot of imagery that was around people like Royère and Perriand and some of the Danes and then we also brought in a lot of fabrics from fashion -- fabrics that are completely unusable in the context of furniture because of how they are woven -- boucles and tweeds and all these kinds of materials. I was very fascinated by how the colouration process or weaving process in fashion textiles does not have the same limitations, and then seeing how we could transport that into the furniture environment by completely readapting the yarns and the qualities and the weaving process in order to make it durable.

I got quite obsessed with all the qualities that had an origin more in the kind of bouclé or tweed environment and we started to re-colour them or bring colours together that are unusual; like when the pink comes in with the black and all these unconventional combinations of colours. Because of the density that is needed for furniture in order to make it survive in the long run it becomes even more interesting I think. What is fascinating is that some of the colourations on the tweeds almost have a painterly impact.

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HJ: This collaboration has taken a while to work on -- you described it as a slow process?

RS: it's incredible -- I think it's two years now.

HJ: Is collaboration very important to your practice in general?

RS: Yes, because I admire a lot of other creative people. My drive is partly the drive of other people's creation. I was always interested in how things could come together with other people -- an artist, another designer, furniture, education when you come into mix with a younger generation. I'm obsessed with the idea of inter-generation communication; it's something that I think is the ultimate activator of evolution. I don't believe so much in the idea of looking in one direction.

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HJ: Are you going to continue working with Kvadrat? Is there going to be another collection?

RS: Yes, of course, it's going to be an evolution -- this is the start of things!

Read a preview of Kvadrat's collaboration with four UK designers, which will be shown at the Milan Salone, in the March/April issue of Blueprint (333), out in March.

 








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