All About Raf Simons

01 May 2021

After a radical career change the designer Raf Simons who before was graduated in industrial and furniture designer launched his own brand in 1995. This would not have happened without a meeting with Linda Copper who is head of the Fashion Department of the Antwerp Academy hereby he became self-trained in menswear designer and so he was encouraged to start his own fashion company.

Raf Simons is a non-stop designer and academic - he always has been working at his brand but also developing collections for other fashion companies and lecturing at fashion educational institutes.

The menswear spring-summer 1999 and autumn-winter 1999 & 2000 Ruffo Research collections were made by him and from October 2000 to 2005 Raf Simons was the head professor of the Fashion Department of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna – Austria.

Along his brilliant career Raf Simons won the first Prize Swiss Textile award in Lucerne – Switzerland, he presented the book RAF SIMONS REDUX in 2005 with Peter De Potter.

In the same year Raf Simons was named creative director of JIL SANDER for menswear & womenswear where stayed in the position until 2012 and during his time at the brand he was the fashion jury of the Hyeres 26th International Festival of Fashion and Photography.

During 2012 the designer presented his first haute couture collection while was the artist director of Christian Dior and in 2016, he has been named the new chief creative of Calvin Klein.

October 31st of 2017 the WSJ magazine appointed Raf Simons as fashion innovator during their innovator awards, later in the same year the British Fashion Council selected him as the Designer of the Year. And also, in 2017 he was on Time's list for being one of the 100 most influential people within the category Icons.

 Later on, in 2018 the CFDA awards Raf Simons for the second year in a row as womenswear designer of the year during his work at Calvin Klein.

In 2020 Raf Simons became co-creative director at Prada while hi still is the main designer at his brand.

Raf Simons has been part of Hervia’s best designers and you can find out more about his collections and products on Hervia.com or at Hervia store in 81 Kind St, Manchester.