Mr. Raf Simons decided to work in fashion after seeing Maltin Margiela's collection, and moved to Antwerp, where many famous designers including Maltin Margiela, Dries Van Noten, and Antwerp 6 were born. However, Linda Loppa, who was president at the time and had witnessed the graduation of Antwerp 6, told him, "You will never learn anything at this school," and he continued to study dressmaking on his own. It is hard to imagine how much of a genius she must have been to be told by the president of the Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts that she would never learn anything.
In 1995, with the encouragement of Linda Loppa, he started his own brand, RAF SIMONS, under his own name. That year, he presented his own brand "RAF SIMONS" collection in the form of a presentation at an exhibition in Milan in the fall/winter of 1995. In the 1997-1998 fall/winter season, he started participating in the Paris Men's Prêt-à-Porter collection for the first time. The brand went on hiatus for a time after that, but has steadily grown and is now a popular brand worldwide.
This item is from the early days of RAF SIMONS, just before the 1997-98 AW collection. Therefore, it has a navy tag different from the current brand tag. And 1997 SS is commonly known as "HOW TO TALK TO YOUR TEEN period". This collection was presented at a photo studio in Paris, and at the same time, a valuable document titled "HOW TO TALK TO YOUR TEEN" was also published, in which a young Raf Simons wrote his thoughts on young people. This item is very rare as items from this period are rarely distributed.