Raf Simons makes retro fresh

Raf Simons is a thinking designer, more intellectual than emotional. But that doesn't mean he can't layer a fantasy concoction atop a base of guipure. Recently, he has challenged his own biases by exploring retro, breaking down elements of various eras and seeking to reinvent them. Here he studied specific sartorial references as well as more amorphous auras of three decades, drawing on '50s romance, '60s experimentation and the wild freedom of the '70s. He funneled it all through his modernist eye and the bastions of imagination realized that are the Dior ateliers.

The powerful results awed and charmed simultaneously, and sometimes confounded. They also struck a hallelujah chorus of revival; fashion daring is not dead - it just fell dormant during the endless, early winter of pre-fall.

The three decades Simons focused on were vastly different culturally. But Simons never wallowed in historical accuracy. Rather, he celebrated what compels him about each decade - cherry-picking, mixing, distorting, magnifying the dissonance into a collection as captivating in its variety as in its execution.