Raf
Simons

Although Raf Simons is now widely recognised for his career in fashion, notably as Creative Director of Christian Dior, his first steps were in industrial design. Trained at SHIVKV in Genk, Belgium, he developed an early interest in form, materials, and the ways in which objects interact with the human body.

In 1991, for his graduation project, he presented Corpo, a series of seven furniture pieces that already revealed his distinctive vision of design. Comprising elongated steel structures reminiscent of legs, combined with shelves in glass, wood, or leather, these pieces stand out for their coverings inspired by clothing and adornment: leather, chain mail, metal chains, and snakeskin. These outer layers can be opened and closed, revealing or concealing the furniture’s interior in a subtle interplay between protection, intimacy, and exposure.

This approach, at once conceptual, sensual, and experimental, already reveals the concerns that would run throughout his career: identity, the body, and the construction of appearance. By bringing furniture and clothing into dialogue, Raf Simons blurs the boundaries between two disciplines, translating the codes of fashion into the realm of design.

Long before his collaborations with major fashion houses, Corpo thus embodied a creative approach in which design extends beyond the creation of functional objects to become a field of experimentation centred on the human body and its representations. This pioneering collection reveals a lesser-known side of Raf Simons and sheds new light on the profound connections between his design research and his world of fashion.

It is this exploration, at the intersection of sensuality and structure, that captivated Pulp Galerie and led it to showcase Raf Simons’s work as a designer.