Paris Fashion Week: Raf Simons shows first collection since leaving Dior

London - Raf Simons on Wednesday showed his first menswear collection in Paris since departing the House of Dior. Journalists and buyers stood in a maze of wooden walls that formed the backdrop of a Twin Peaks-inspired collection. There were no seats. Booming on the loudspeakers was the voice of composer Angelo Badalamenti, famous for scoring the Twin Peaks television series.

Models wore supersized Puffa jackets, tailored coats and elongated moth-eaten jumpers, decorated with boy scout and Letterman style patches, and striped like sports jerseys. Trousers were cropped and tapered tight to the leg, highlighting the sense of an ill-fitting silhouette, a uniform too large.

The show is dedicated to David Lynch

“Today is David Lynch’s birthday,” the designer said backstage of the Twin Peaks creator. “I didn’t know. But I like to think that I am now dedicating this show to him. They were all the things that were in my mind for this collection,” Simons explained. “That’s how I was thinking. I was trying to not think, ‘Ah, what kind of story should I make out of Cindy Sherman and Twin Peaks?’ you know – I didn’t want that. It was just very fragmented.”

The focus was on creating a world rather than a narrative. Inspired by Sherman’s retrospective exhibition Untitled Horrors, the designer’s thoughts turned to the unsettling, to what can happen when things don’t go quite right. “I always think about nightmares, I’m always interested in horror movies, it has been coming back a lot. I always like making beautiful things...but it’s also interesting when something goes wrong, something’s weird, something’s dark...there’s very much this contrast.”

Simons continued: “I titled the show Nightmares and Dreams because we all have dreams and we all have nightmares,” he said. “There are always amazing things and there are always horrible things, for each individual and people in general. Not that I want to go heavy, it’s not about that.”

Images:Raf Simons AW16