André the Giant gets a new hand knit from his mum. He puts it on, drags himself over a barbed barbed wire assault course, then gets molested by three small werewolves. He takes the sweater off, tosses it in a bin and you buy it for £1,720. Sound about right?

This is Raf Simons’ new knitwear collection. Sized-up, ripped-up and priced the fuck up.

I’m not sure I totally get how supposedly cerebral, conceptual designers all seem to mine the same ideas at the same time? I mean, just focusing on the absurd oversizedness for a second, OFF-WHITE, Vetements, Gosha, Margiela, have all offered this ‘idea’.  “Not only are the garments deconstructed”, says Joerg Koch, founder of 032c Magazine, “but it seems also the idea or code of that specific garment is newly programmed.”  Which is a pretty smart way of saying a sweater has fuck off arms.

I expect you can probably ascertain from the images whether this is your kind of fit or not. The fact that they are made in Italy from 100% virgin wool is probably neither here nor there. You can check the full selection over at Union in LA, a store I was lucky enough to visit a week or so ago. Although I have to say, they were the only store I visited in the US that forbade me from taking any snaps. Yet here I am being the bigger man, giving them some props. So big props for their range of two grand whale sweaters with werewolf holes.

Raf Simons