Raf Simons Fall/Winter 2002

My Raf Simons collection continues to grow slowly: I just bought this sweater from the fall/winter 2002 'Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus Quinquefolia)' collection. Almost all of the clothes and accessories which I want are from past Raf Simons collections, and there is virtually nothing from the current collection of any designer which particularly grabs me. This is good because it stops me spending too much money (the things which I want are very rarely available to buy), but it is also frustrating how difficult old season pieces are to track down. I managed to find this sweater on Yahoo Auctions Japan (for some reason eBay is not big in Japan, but Yahoo Auctions is), and I used SharpServiceJapan as a proxy service (you need to pay somebody in Japan to buy the item on your behalf and then post it to you, unless you have your own Japanese postal address; SharpService was fast and trustworthy).

Even with this added cost, it wasn't very expensive; in many ways it is much more satisfying buying pre-owned designer clothing than it is buying new. Designer clothes really last well (this sweatshirt is 8 years old, but hardly it shows its age at all), and when you buy old season you don't pay the *ridiculous* price mark-ups, you don't get treated like shit by the minimum-wage snobs working in designer stores, and you get the satisfaction of having got something hard-to-find. If you want something from a past season it also means that it's not suddenly going to start looking 'old season' in your eyes in a few month's time, which is always a risk with buying brand new things.

Whenever I bite the bullet and buy something designer brand new I nearly always feel as if various factors conspire to make the experience poor value for money and not entirely satisfactory, but in contrast I'm forever checking eBay, Yahoo Auctions, Ratuken, Yoox etc. and various online forums where people buy and sell stuff, in search not of the new but rather of the old. In fashion terms, this is quite perverse. After all, it's always about the newnewnew in fashion, and crucially about us constantly buying brand new things (because the system tells us that the old ones are no longer adequate every six months or so).

The fall/winter 2002 collection was, if not one of my all time favourite Raf collections, really good and quite subversive, with its 'tough nature' theme, combined with the clean cut American college sportswear motifs:

Click here to see the entire collection, or read more about it in my long post Raf Simons: 15 Years of Brilliance.

Please excuse the institutional surroundings; this is at university, not at home:

Raf Simons fall/winter 2002 sweater, cheap jeans, Raf Simons fall/winter 2007 high-tops.

Don't worry, pictures of me are not going to become a theme on this blog. Amateur pout-athons are rarely a good look.

PS. If by some miraculous chance you want to sell me the Raf Simons spring/summer 2000 'The Pyramid' bomber jacket, or if you see it for sale anywhere, please send me an email and I will be very grateful.