When Raf Simons left Dior after just over three years, the fashion world was shocked. He previously went into some detail about the split, suggesting that the sheer amount and pace of the work at Dior was too much for him.
Now, in a new interview with Amuse, the designer opens up about another one of the reasons he left the fashion house. Simons recounts that as a kid he was so enamored with Helmut Lang, but he couldn't afford the brand — so he had to connect with it in other ways. "Of course you want some connection for yourself, but with some brands it’s just not possible," Simons says. "You could not even buy a lace of a sneaker, it’s just too expensive."
Simons explains that it was the accessibility of Calvin Klein that really drew him in: "To be really honest, the attraction and the reason why I came to Calvin is because it has the highest and the lowest and everything in between, so you can reach out to everybody. Which, in high fashion, is not always easy. It was not something that was possible at Dior, for example. It is possible at Calvin Klein."
Read the full interview over at Amuse.
In other news, the 2017 CDFA Award honors Raf Simons, Virgil Abloh, and Rick Owens.