Y'all ready for this? It was recently announced via the designer's Instagram that Raf Simons will be entering the realm of womenswear for the first time at the namesake label. In a series of posts, the designer announced the news in with a message reading: “Raf Simons will present his upcoming Spring/Summer 2021 men’s and first-ever women’s collection on October 23rd”.

With his last season announcement of joining forces with Miuccia Prada as Prada's new co-creative director, this will mean that Simons will be delivering two womenswear collections this season. One under his eponymous label, and the other for Prada SS21, which is no easy feat, particularly in our current landscape. Both will be debut collections under each label.

This, of course, is not the designers first womenswear rodeo. Between his Tenures at Dior and Jil Sander and lest we forget his short-lived stint at Calvin Klein, Simons knows how to do womenswear well. With his signature undone, awkward and androgynous approach to clothing, it couldn't come at a better time for the label to branch out. With more of a focus on androgyny and less on the binary, we can only assume that a new iteration born out of the same threads of his historically successful menswear collections will be one to remember.

The Instagram announcement was posted on Friday 18 September and featured a black static image with bold coloured font. The posts were accompanied by what looks like stickers, scattered over the image and printed with slogans such as 'teenage dreams', 'join us' and 'question everything'. The designer historically presents his collections in the Paris menswear calendar earlier in the year, however, this collection is set to debut October 23rd, which falls a few weeks after Paris womenswear shows ordinarily would be presented. With the COVID-19 pandemic still sweeping the globe, many designers and brands have shifted to virtual presentations this season for safety reasons, so it will be interesting to see what Simons will do.

 

Image Credit: @rafsimons