Shot by Japanese photographer Teruyoshi Hayashida, Take Ivy is a cult coffee-table book documenting the style of male students on Ivy League campuses that was first published in 1965 and reissued by popular demand in 2010 (original copies have sold for thousands of dollars). For those familiar with Hayashida’s images, Raf Simons’s new collection for Jil Sander offers a glimpse inside the women’s dorms of those prestigious schools, as cast in a very stylishly enhanced future. Taking inspiration from traditional collegiate dressing, letterman sweaters were reconfigured with elongated waistbands and then morphed to form nip-waisted dresses. In place of a coat of arms or Greek insignia, words such as promise and silence were emblazoned on the back of jackets, alluding to the secret codes of conduct you might expect from a sorority.
Fashion’s move towards an oversize silhouette reverberated in the outerwear, with a hooded coat in winter white cut from techno gabardine wool. It’s an idea that the Belgian designer looked at last spring; one only needs peruse the best-dressed lists of 2011 to know that his voluminous shapes—couture-like bell-shaped skirts and dresses as worn on the red carpet by Tilda Swinton and Amanda Brooks—were a winning and forward-thinking look. In the same way, the latest collection underscores Simons’ reputation as a forerunner. Given this season many designers toyed with familiar menswear tropes, his reworkings of iconic American sportswear were in a league of their own; one bordeaux-red coatdress rendered in techno satin with a generous rounded shoulder and strict pencil-skirt line, was the chicest rendition of a varsity jacket one could imagine. Pieces like these are enough to tempt any woman back into the classroom, and since pre-fall precedes what is commonly known as the back-to-school season, this is higher learning indeed.
