Jil Sander only started branching out with menswear in 1997, that's effectively 12 years in business on the menswear front and taking into account the houses' history, it happened only briefly before Bertelli bought a majority stake in Jil's business. I would hardly call this a business with a rich, established history... let alone with a strongly defined, existing clientele as there used to be with Jil's womenswear (even that customer has changed from the 80ies/early 90ies... Jil herself understood that when she came back with a slightly evolved vision from that ultra-stark 90ies minimalism).
The way you are talking about Jil Sander menswear sounds as if we were talking of a cult-menswear label as Dior Homme used to be under Hedi Slimane, which itself was an operation that for a long time was not profitable, despite the fact that people around the glove were snatching up their iconic jeans, sneakers and other products bearing the Dior Homme name... I don't think that ever happened at Jil Sander, let alone that male end customers recgnized such a 'vision' or 'look' as you described it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, but I don't see Jil Sander as being a style that needs to look as stark and harsh as Raf Simons is sometimes doing... A simple elegance, yes, but the clothes - especially in menswear - hardly ever speak to me as being nonchalant and with ease... his style is sometimes a bit too studied in a bad, contrived way.