THE JOB at Dior has finally been filled. Tomorrow, the Paris fashion house will announce that Raf Simons will take over immediately as artistic director, replacing John Galliano, who was fired from Dior last year after he made anti-Semitic remarks.
His first collection is planned for July for the autumn haute couture shows.
The choice of Simons culminates more than a year of discussions and apparent soul-searching by Dior and its boss, Bernard Arnault, who is chairman of LVMH (Louis Vuitton), about the ideal person to give creative direction to the 66-year-old luxury brand.
In an interview yesterday Simons expressed delight at the appointment. “The first time I heard about the Dior position,” he said, “I thought, ‘This feels right’.”
Marc Jacobs, the US star at Louis Vuitton, was a favourite until talks broke down late last summer, reportedly over compensation. Other big names, including Alber Elbaz of Lanvin, rejected Dior’s advances. Highly regarded or not, Dior seemed to have trouble finding someone.
In October, its chief executive, Sidney Toledano, said the search could take months. A few weeks later he, Arnault and his daughter, Delphine Arnault, the deputy director of Dior, began talks with Simons. At the time Simons (44) was at Jil Sander. But while Simons is influential, having started the trend for bright colours that has washed over much of the affordable clothing market, and was in discussions in 2010 with French rival PPR about taking over Yves Saint Laurent, he was not widely seen as a candidate for Dior. His minimalist designs for Jil Sander seemed at odds with Dior’s ultra-femininity. And he is a low-key presence in a business that tends to love Barnum types.
John Galliano wrecked his career in February 2011 with an anti-Semitic rant caught on a mobile phone camera. Fired from Dior, he was found guilty by a tribunal in connection with clashes in two Paris bars with people who accused him of hate crimes. He told the court he could not remember the incidents, blaming his behaviour on job stress and addiction to Valium and alcohol.
Temperamentally, Simons is the opposite of Galliano, who, according to a close friend, admired Simons’s show in February for Jil Sander, a collection of delicately feminine clothes in pinks and beige. It was also Simons’s last for Sander. He was fired shortly before the show, replaced by the brand’s founder.
While not the obvious choice for Dior, Simons is nonetheless the logical one. In his six years at Jil Sander he expanded its minimalist form to include more feminine shapes, some based on 50s couture. More telling were his men’s shows, in the mid 90s, in which he often projected a generation’s ideas and obsessions against a monumental backdrop. A romantic is surely what he is. His contract with Dior allows him to continue his own men’s line. Among his responsibilities will be overseeing advertising.
– (New York Times service)