Raf Simons SS17 campaign

A few hours before the New York show as creative director of Calvin Klein, Raf Simons presents the SS17 ad campaign of its namesake brand. The images realized with his longtime collaborators Willy Vanderperre and Olivier Rizzo reproduce the style of Robert Mapplethorpe's works, particularly the series portraying Patti Smith. The shots are entirely in black and white and feature the models Yannick Abrath, Baptiste Faure, Jonas Gloer, Luca Lemaire and Montell Martin, wearing key pieces of Simons proposal for SS17, many of which, presented at Pitti in Florence last June, are decorated with Mapplethorpe's iconic works. Watching Vanderperre images is an opportunity for those who do not know him to explore, albeit indirectly, the controversial poetic, sexuality saturates and homoeroticism, of the New York artist.