Jil Sander Leads the Men’s Pack Again
June 30, 2004 - Milan
A season ago Jil Sander’s minimalism seemed out of step with the baroque mood of the time. Yet this week in Milan the subtly simple chic of the men’s wear collection she showed Tuesday evening shot her out to the head of the fashion pack.
Sander’s choice of fabric, color palette, accessories, detailing, models and music were all exactly right, as was the self-confident mood of the show. She used just one song throughout – Hall and Oates great cut “I Can’t Go For That” on a slickly spliced loop – and brought in a new crop of male models on exclusive contracts for the show, staged in the house’s pristine show space near Castello Sforzesco.
Jil’s opening model Julian Feitsma was discovered selling vegetables in a Berlin market this summer. But the collection itself would work on a mature man in his fifties, and knock a good decade of his look. In a word, it was very commercially savvy.
Plus Sander captured better than any designer the new lean suit appearing on runways in Milan, with one-button jackets chopped off at the hip and pants cut with peg legs. Shown in mat blue, putty or faded beige cottons, they made for a naturally elegant, and novel, silhouette.
Though Jil has just turned 60, she still keeps coming up with fresh ideas that other designers will follow. She sent out a great new look where guys wore double shirt/jackets in wafer like cottons that you just know will make magazine spreads and covers in the near future.
“I was imaging a man at ease who wanted to be able to dream in something simple. Someone who wears a $2,000 pair of custom made shoes that only he knows about,” smiled Sander after the show, as Patrzio Bertelli peered smiling out from the backstage. So let’s bury those recent trade rumors of a new rift.
But calling this collection minimalist would be misleading. Jil showed some great college kids white shirts, emblazoned with graphic abstract silhouettes and heads, micro motor-bike jackets in a washed out steel hue and skinny belts in battered metal-colors or pink. In addition, the woman who gave birth to the $400 jeans, introduced some witty new jeans bearing a 51 logo in a circle on the back pocket. Retailers take note.
Since being re-united with the house that bears her name 13 months ago, Sander has taken a little time to find her groove – her first men’s collection was thrown together in a few weeks and her second was far from stellar. However, for spring-summer 2005 the designer has captured better than anyone the thirst for a new, easier gentlemanly aesthetic. She rules.
Prada chief executive Patrizio Bertelli’s front-row seat at the men’s Jil Sander show in Milan Tuesday night was conspicuously vacant, which left some attendees wondering whether the empty spot confirmed speculation there’s tension yet again between the German designer and her Italian boss. Not so, according to a Prada spokesman, who said Bertelli was backstage with Sander. Over the past few months, there’s been talk percolating the two may be headed for a second rift just more than a year after they brokered a peace deal and Sander returned to the label bearing her name. Prada has denied the speculation
"Does the modern man want to be in the skin of a designer or does he want to keep his own?"
