For the past decade, Belgian fashion designer Raf Simons and Los Angeles based contemporary artist Sterling Ruby’s ongoing partnership was—and arguably still is—undoubtedly the most celebrated collaborative effort between two creatives in their respective mediums. With projects ranging from co-designing a menswear collection and a store interior for Raf Simons’ eponymous line to Simons couture collections at Dior and even his short-lived overhaul of Calvin Klein, since 2010 the two have been a pervasive force blurring the line between fashion, art and commerce. Even though Ruby was initially advised by art dealers that the endeavor would be viewed as thinly veiled commercialization and potentially damage his art career, he went trudged ahead. Clearly it was a good choice.
Though neither their first nor most recent project together, Simons and Ruby’s co-designed Autumn/Winter 2014 menswear collection, “Raf Simons/Sterling Ruby,” is by far the duo’s most notable. While consisting of typical Raf Simons silhouettes—oversized military-inspired outerwear, slim denim and heavy work shirts—the collection was imbued with various aspects of Ruby’s art practice, adding depth, emotion and, somewhat atypical for Simons, radiant colors. Above all, there was an unfinished and turbulent quality to the clothes themselves, one of Sterling’s signature motifs. Coats dotted with bleach splatters were combined with brightly-colored, haphazardly plastered fabric collages, bringing Sterling’s multidisciplinary totems to life.
Initially a mutual effort by both to redefine how artists collaborated with fashion designers (and vice-versa), the final result was a paradigm shift completely erasing any prior notion of how the two parties could—and should—work together. Intent on creating a collection atypical for both, the result was more than the sum of its parts, the co-label quite literally stated as such.
