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Raf Simons is bringing back 100 pieces from his highly coveted archive
The collection, dubbed "Raf Simons Archive Redux," will go on sale later this year.
Raf Simons archival pieces are among some of the most covetable in menswear, and getting your hands on some of his prized designs from the past will soon be much easier.
Simons' eponymous label has announced it'll reissue 100 pieces for "Raf Simons Archive Redux" in celebration of its 25-year anniversary. The full range will be unveiled later this month, with the pieces becoming available to purchase in December, according to Vogue. For weeks, the Raf Simons Instagram account has been teasing archival images — which we now know gives us an idea of what to expect.
Confirmed pieces — Among the lineup will be pieces from Simons' first collection in 1995, the red shirts and slim ties from the 1998 "Radioactivity" show, and the Kollaps hoodies (up top) from 2002's long-winded but still relevantly titled "Woe Onto Those Who Spit on the Fear Generation... The Wind Will Blow It Back" collection.
"Both a creative and commercial gesture, Archive Redux offers the new generation of Raf Simons followers a chance to experience these garments for the first time," a press release for the collection said, according to Vogue. "A nostalgia for the unknown."
What Raf fans will really want to know is if anything will be reissued from the legendary "Riot! Riot! Riot!" collection in 2001. A bomber jacket from that year is the most coveted piece of all from Simons' archive and one of the most prized pieces in all of menswear. It once sold on Grailed for $47,000, setting the record for the largest sale on the resale outlet.
Perhaps you want something even more rare — Another Grailed user got their hands on a piece of furniture from Simons' college thesis and listed it for nearly $100,000 in May. The armored, avant-garde cabinet was produced in the lead up to Simons' graduation in 1991 from the LUCA School of Arts in Genk, where he studied industrial and furniture design. He'd go on to work in the furniture space for four years before launching his namesake label in 1995.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not, no one has leaped at the rare piece, and it's still available to purchase. We don't anticipate there'll be the same sort of restraint for the archival clothing when it lands later this year.