Raf Simons, Kinetic Youth, Spring/Summer 1999
Raf Simons organised his show at the “Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie” in Paris on the 3rd of July 1998. The “Kinetic Youth” collection was presented outside, in front of the enormous mirror ball located in La Villette’s Science and Industry museum in Paris. The set referred to the architectural influences in Raf Simons’ life as well as kinetic objects from his youth.
Raf Simons used different songs of David Bowie during the whole show. The show opened with David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and was inspired by the graphic style of Bauhaus.
In the second part, a group of very young teenagers emerged wearing white turtleneck shirts with an “R” symbol, stitched on the collar, to “Life on Mars” by David Bowie. Their pants were all in different colours: red, petrol, light grey, mint, beige mêlée, marine. The models walked together in a group on the bridge, on one side of the runway leading to the mirror ball, then to the central building and to the bridge on the opposite side of the first one.
The inspiration behind the last two parts was the “Rubik’s cube” object; order and disorder of colours. Inspired by youth culture, the song of the final part was ”Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd. The whole group of ca. 60 boys walked quite fast on the runway, but in the opposite direction.