These $20,000 Raf Simons Parkas Are Worth It

What makes those $20,000 Raf Simons parkas worth the pricetag.

Image via Grailed

A kidney sells for $260k on the black market in the U.S., according to a 2012 inforgraphic by MedicalTranscription.net. That’s enough to buy a trio of Raf Simons jackets priced at an exorbitant $20,000 and still have enough change left over to buy two hearts ($119,000 each, according to the same study).

The kidney is the kind of organ you generally want to hold onto, unless you want to cash in at the most opportune moment. Several Grailed users have decided this is the time—and if we’re being honest, you only really need one kidney, anyway. “Trade for kidney?” user souljaboy writes in the listing’s comment section. “Swap for my appendix. 2 fingers, my testicles and a kidney,” succ says (while exposing his lack of knowledge about the value of organs on the black market). “Gonna kidnap my friend and sell his kidney fo' these,” writes user nepteamnep, who is finally is onto something.

As of press time, the listing has 60 additional comments and 830 who’ve “hearted” it on Grailed. With so many interested parties, what’s taking for so long for these parkas—which caused quite a stir when they were first listed in January—to sell? A single one of these parkas, maybe the most recognizable of the set, sold individually for $7,000; so, if anything, 20K might be a great bulk deal, like if Costco started selling Belgian designers.

“I mean, the average person would think that’s ridiculous, but to a menswear enthusiast or a Raf collector, they might see that as a deal, because you’re buying three pieces that are iconic and instrumental to the history and legacy of a designer like Raf Simons,” Grailed’s brand director Lawrence Schlossman tells Complex. “To see these jackets in person, with the hand-painted detail and intricacy of them—they all stand up in their own right for sure.”

The market has never been riper for a piece like this to garner this amount of money. Raf is at the zenith of his powers, and it’s only a matter of time with someone with $20,000 is inoculated into the cult.

“Simons, right now, if we’re being totally real, is at peak influence and popularity, maybe more so than ever before, based on a lot of circumstances,” Schlossman says. “Exposure through trend-setting rappers like A$AP Rocky and Kanye West, and then people like Virgil Abloh—so you can kind of factor all that into the price. Objectively, those are iconic pieces that are extremely valuable and are garments that might even appreciate over time.”

The trio would be the perfect Raf Simons-starter pack for a collector hoping to get into the game, or could serve as an integral puzzle piece to an archivist or Raf fan who already shares an apartment with Simons’ work.


The 2003 fall/winter collection the parkas are from encompasses many of the qualities people adore Simons for: his ability to reference moments and objects that shaped him, leverage and connect to subcultures, and bridge the gap between art and fashion. The references here are particularly resonant as Simons was allowed access to the archives of Peter Saville. Saville is a legendary graphic designer whose most iconic designs can be seen on record covers (or hipsters’ T-shirts). He spent much of his career working for Factory Records creating, without much direction from bands, whatever cover art he was feeling

“The visual side of Factory ended up being my responsibility,” Saville told The Talks. “For instance, Joy Division gave me some elements when they were ready to do Unknown Pleasures and I was just allowed to do it the way I wanted to do it. And when there was a second album, they came to me: 'What have you got?' And that’s where the Closer cover came from.”

Closer ended up being integral to the creation of Simons’ parkas and even inspired the name of the entire collection that introduced them. Coming across Saville’s artwork was influential in Simons’ life. “I picked up records, because when you’re young, you’re into the bands,” he told The Talks. “And what were the bands back in the day? The Cure, Anne Clark, and all the new wave things. And then suddenly there were these things from New Order, Power, Corruption, and Lies with the flowers and the wreath. I was like, “What is that?”

To love Simons is to love the “Closer” collection, even if you’re not familiar with it. The collection is fundamental to any fanboy’s understanding of Simons, because it touches on many of the inspirations and subcultures that have fueled the designer’s entire career.

The parkas are the crown jewels of the collection, though. They distil everything we love about Simons into a single piece that combines quality, hand-made details, and the types of cultural references that have made the designer so popular with the youths. Supreme even ended up referencing the floral pattern from the Power, Corruption, & Lies cover 10 years after Simons did it.

As the listing states, they are “a perfect Archive opportunity for [a] collector.” And whoever is willing to pay out $20,000 will have to love the pieces as much as the seller does. Grailed confirmed that stylist Stephen Mann is parting with the pieces; Mann did not return Complex’s request for comment, but some Twitter lurking shows that at one point these were a prized possession for Mann. "Just landed a set of Raf Simons Parkas from one of my favourite Raf collections, the archive is smiling," he wrote. If the stylist is talking about the parkas in this tweet, as it appears, that means he acquired them almost exactly five years ago.

Regardless of how much value they have to menswear nerds everywhere, $20,000 is a ton of change to drop. “If the full set sold, it would be close to double the top purchases made on Grailed,” Schlossman says. “We’ve had a few things sell in the $10,000 range, but nothing approaching even 15 grand.”

That price is what’s clearly standing in the way of these parkas finding a new home. “They’re still available because someone needs to pony up $20,000 or somewhere close to acquire this, so I still think the barrier of entry right now is the amount of money,” Schlossman admits. He adds that another hurdle is that many hardcore Simons collectors probably have at least one of these pieces and therefore wouldn’t need the whole set. But for anyone who doesn't, all they have to lose is $20K—or a semi-vital organ.

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