A deep dive into Raf Simons’ oceanic offering for Calvin Klein SS19

Trust Raf Simons, the evergreen designer with a tendency to appropriate even the most obscure of pop cultural references, to take Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and make it fashion for Calvin Klein 205W39NYC SS19.

The Belgian creator, widely credited with injecting a sense of cool into the PVH brand when he took the helm as creative director two years ago, has had a pretty successful run so far. Profits are up 18%, and the legendary underwear line is currently fronted by arguably the most famous family on the face of planet earth: the Kardashians.

Simons has that miraculous ability to take a subject with serious baggage — be it a reality TV family or a slice of timeless classic — and somehow manage to make you forget all its engrained connotations, creating the illusion that it’s the first time you’ve ever encountered it.

The Calvin Klein runway was dyed crimson red with the blood of the unfortunate few to fall into the great white shark’s grasp, as the Spielberg film’s ominous score played overhead and a glittering, moonlit seascape was projected onto screens behind. Its serene setting was interrupted, briefly, only a couple of times, with a silhouetted swimmer passing by, or by quick, traumatising flashes of flailing legs — a scene from the film — shot from below.

The show was an homage to the treacherous, changing state of America right now, and ever since Simons took the helm at the brand, his work has been considered a reactionary statement (albeit a subtle one) to Trump’s presidency.

But Simons is never literal. “A journey through America leads, inevitably, to the edge of the landscape: the beach,” he said in the show’s press notes. “At the beach there is this incredible idea of beauty, but also a tension — between land and ocean, a feeling of two worlds meeting, maybe colliding. There’s a sense of the unexpected — and always, a temptation.”

What he delivered was a collection shaped by those who dared to stick their toes in the water. Wetsuits, either full body or folded at the waist, were given a slightly more sartorial treatment, exposing tie-dye, floral and animal print linings. They were the staple component of the collection, and wound up informing Simons’ new silhouette: after years of the baggy trend, the skin-tight look is definitely back in.

Tank tops and lifevest-like harnesses, crafted from rubber rather than straight neoprene, were another key element in Simons’ slightly dystopian vision. They felt innovative in the most literal sense, but that slightly off-kilter and consistent vision of his manifested throughout his vast, still commercially viable offering.

His footwear and accessories, familiar in the sense that they still reference Simons’ country western MO from previous seasons, were welcomed into this waterproof era. Slip-on heels, stilettos and western-style boots were made of high-shine patent leather, like futuristic flippers. Models carried everything from scuba goggles with a couturier, sunglass-style re-up to an array of clutches and handbags. Some, made in lurid, foreboding shades of yellow, orange and crimson, looked just as much like buoyancy aids as they did luxury accessories. Then, there’s the addition of intentionally murky dyed fringe motifs. Swooped across necklines and waists, in blue colourways they sway like shimmering water; in deep red, they somewhat resemble oozing wounds.

But for all of his trailblazing quirks, Simons still has his feet placed firmly on the ground when it comes to being a designer for a major American label with commercial responsibilities too. His array of pleated skirts — surely a hot piece for the season — come with shark-bite-shaped slits, and they were paired with chunky, unseasonal knitwear made lighter by the splits around the neckline. Throughout the show, there were plenty of allusions to a state of dishevelment, both with design and styling; perhaps that’s a not-so-subtle reference to the hampering predicament modern Americans — the ones surrounding Simons right now — are finding themselves in.

The most coveted items of all are bound to be the vest tops, emblazoned with both the Jaws poster and CK’s classic logo. A meeting of two stalwarts of American pop culture, it’s another example of how today’s designers can have customers chomping at the bit for an item of clothing they’ve encountered and sniffed at a thousand times before. Real fans could’ve bought a Jaws tee for $10 off Amazon yesterday, but in Raf’s hands, the fashion world is rightfully going mad for them.

But Jaws isn’t the only slice of cinematic Americana that Simons has dissected for this season. He placed the Spielberg classic alongside The Graduate, the Dustin Hoffman-starring dramatic rom-com from 1967, and dutifully drew out the parallels between them. The latter picture has influenced much of his flawless tailoring: oversized herringbone suit jackets, billowing overcoats disguised as graduation gowns, always topped off with a costume-y mortarboard. They hit the runway alongside an array of chopped-up, erratically patterned women’s evening wear in an array of dated prints — not Simons’ most revolutionary work, but necessary pieces that Calvin Klein’s more traditional consumers are sure to buy into.

Among other pieces, preppy loose cardigans, Breton-stripe sweaters and crimson red beanie hats (reminiscent of another hit oceanic movie, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) are bound to be best-sellers come springtime. They proved that Simons can still pay homage to proud American style, while simultaneously channelling the country’s ominous future. It’s a line he’s learned to toe perfectly: between provocateur and pleaser, radical and conformist. For Spring/Summer 2019, Raf Simons was doing more than testing the waters of modern Americana, he dived right into the deep end, and the results are just as fascinating and unpredictable as we’ve come to expect from him.