After taking to Twitter earlier this year to share his appreciation for Raf Simons via a rap entitled “Please Don’t Touch My Raf”, A$AP Rocky has confessed his love once again for the Belgian designer, who has appeared for the first time on Time magazine’s annual ‘100 Most Influential People’ list.
As previously, the honorees on the list have a short blurb written about them by a friend, or previous 100 alumni. “I feel like Raf Simons is important for the culture based on the fact that he built a whole new religion around fashion,” said A$AP. “His archive is more important and relevant than anything that's out today...When you wrap your mind around the concept that he wrote the future of fashion and design in the 1990s and early 2000s, then you'll also understand why Raf is the greatest to ever do it.”
Fashion photographer Miles Aldridge was tasked with shooting portraits for the covers of the issue, and he did not stray from the colourful, high-contrast images that he is well known for. “I wanted the pictures to be bright,” he said of his initial idea, “bright being almost an adjective for sound rather than images.”
Also on the list is RuPaul of RuPaul's Drag Race (introduced by Naomi Campbell), artist Cindy Sherman, Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, and Moonlight director Barry Jenkins. It includes some of the biggest names in music, television, and politics, but there is a special place in everyone’s hearts for Simons – and you’d struggle to find a bigger fan than A$AP.
