Life & Style

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Dandy gets colourful 21st-century makover

By: Thomas Adamson

Posted: 01/19/2013 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Enlarge Image

A model wears a creation by Belgian fashion designer Raf Simons. (CP)

Enlarge Image

A model wears a creation by Belgian fashion designer Raf Simons. (CP)

Enlarge Image

A model wears a creation by Belgian fashion designer Raf Simons. (CP)

Enlarge Image

A model wears a creation by Belgian fashion designer Raf Simons. (CP)

Enlarge Image

A model wears a creation by Belgian fashion designer Raf Simons. (CP)

Enlarge Image

A model wears a creation by Belgian fashion designer Raf Simons. (CP)

PARIS -- Raf Simons gave the dandy a colourful, 21st century makeover in his accomplished menswear show in Paris, replete with flappy collars, cravates, long cuffs and sumptuous satin.

Opening the show, a model in satin pants clutched a black and white striped hat at his side. He marched past in a coat that harked back to the Napoleonic era -- through its A-line shape, and long cravate-like collar tied in a knot.

With subtlety, 45-year-old Simons thus took the codes of the early 19th century and served them up with a bright and youthful feel for his fall-winter 2013-2014 offering.

The Belgian designer emphasized necks through large pointed pink, blue and yellow collars -- shirts often on top of turtlenecks which ruffled in a dandy style. This mixed imaginatively with strong and wide open collars -- that again added the feeling of exuberant layering.

Shoulders, too, were given emphasis.

Long coloured horizontal bars on the front, which joined the shoulders, worked brilliantly -- and resembled the straps that held a cape in place.

But Simons is a master of subversion.

There were no capes here, and though many of the looks harked back to yesteryear, they remained contemporary and in the spirit of his intellectual style.

A recurrent motif was a knitted face on a geeky-looking sweater; instead of hair, it sported a question mark.

It was an appropriate symbol for the indefatigable designer and current creative director of Christian Dior, who always surprises and never seems to stop questioning fashion.

-- The Associated Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 19, 2013 E10

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