On October 22, 2015, the day Raf Simons left Dior, he stepped down as Creative Director, describing the decision as a choice to focus on other interests, including his own label.
On October 22, 2015, the day Raf Simons left Dior, he stepped down as Creative Director, describing the decision as a choice to focus on other interests, including his own label.
October 22, 2025
On October 22, 2015, the day Raf Simons left Dior, he stepped down as Creative Director, describing the decision as a choice to focus on other interests, including his own label.
Raf Simons entered Dior in April 2012, stepping into one of the industry’s most mythic jobs. His first haute couture collection arrived in July 2012, and the message came through in two languages at once: the discipline of modernism, and the romance of Dior’s own floral obsession. Guests moved through salon rooms wrapped in flowers, each space soaked in a single hue, as if the house itself had turned into a living mood board, and Simons called the blooms a metaphor for what he was trying to do: keep the codes, sharpen the energy.
Across the next three and a half years, his Dior became a study with quiet impact: clean lines that carried couture construction, youthful proportions placed inside a grand Parisian tradition, and a refresh of house signatures through a lens that felt architectural and emotionally direct. Commentators later summed up the total as 20 collections during his tenure, a number that feels both dazzling and breathless.
Jennifer Lawrence’s iconic Oscars Dior gown, crafted by Dior’s in-house couture ateliers under Raf Simons’s direction, became a milestone in her Hollywood rise, its flawless drape cascading down the stairs, until her trip turned the moment into pure cinema.
The calendar became part of the story. Raf Simons spoke candidly about time scarcity in fashion, describing a reality where collections could be built in just weeks, and he also faced Dior’s famously packed rhythm of multiple collections each year. In hindsight, the tension reads clearly: an exacting designer, a monumental house, and an industry tempo that turns inspiration into a sprint.
His final runway moment at Dior arrived earlier that same month, during Paris Fashion Week: Spring 2016 ready-to-wear, staged at the Louvre’s Cour Carrée with a monumental hill covered in 400,000 delphiniums, a last giant gesture that linked Raf Simons back to Dior’s “flower woman” spirit while keeping his own clarity of silhouette front and center.
If Raf Simons left Dior an imprint, it lives in the way he proved that modern restraint can still feel luxurious, that emotion can arrive through precision, and that a heritage house can look forward while standing firmly inside its own mythology.
