Originally posted by Fashion Wire Daily Milan June 24@ 2003
Pure Vision: Our Chat with Sander
By Godfrey Deeny
"All my male friends told me it would never work. That I should not go back," admits Jil Sander as she presents her first new designs since returning to her house last month.
"They are practical people, my friends, and they said it would be too difficult. So when I was talking with the people at Prada of coming back I thought very hard and took a lot of care to understand how this would work," she adds. "But look at Apple, Steve Jobs came back did he not? And he created the IPod. I even have a metallic Apple myself."
Dressed in a navy blue cotton pants suit and signature white shirt, Sander is clearly delighted to be back at the helm and presenting her ideas.
After quitting the house, Sander found it too painful to enter any of the house's boutiques. Instead she got Internet friendly. "I could go online and see the collections, and learn what people thought. I could read Fashion Wire Daily. I made it one of my favorite pages!"
Since settling her differences with Patrizio Bertelli, Sander spent four and a half weeks in her Milan atelier pulling together concepts with her original team here. Though models wore only 14 looks fully by Sander out of some 500 displayed in the house's Milan headquarters, already one can discern a her hand in the collection.
Starting with the models themselves -- neatly coifed young English public school types -- and finishing with the footwear, including a selection of new neat brogues, the changes were already evident.
"I decided to be more functional but sophisticated. I wanted a look that is not so equipped and suits that are in superfine cotton and relaxed, yet classical enough for a professional man like a lawyer to wear," explains Sander as a model appears.
He's attired in a new suit with pointed shoulders and more forgiving pants, made from what Jil calls, "a superfine, seersucker that almost looks like corduroy."
Sander also showed some great graphic shirts, with columns of bold stripes embroidered on one side, and color bands that stop halfway down the back. "I call them broken kilometers," Sander explains.
Sander, who is generally credited with making the first "designer sneaker" with Puma, also showed some great slip-on sneaks with ankle bands and high-tops with elastic laces.
"With Puma we started making really cool looks based on 1930s boxers shoes. We were not aware of what we had. We could have sold five million pairs!" recalls Jil, who ironically is wearing Adidas sneakers herself.
While on her enforced sabbatical, Sander kept her wardrobe fresh with looks from Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto. "I also once went into Brooks Brothers and bought myself a white shirt for a 15-year-old boy. The first thing I did when we decided I was coming back was to order 15 white shirts from my old atelier," she says, feeling the collar of the one she's wearing.
"I think it's a time for more tailoring," adds Sander, who is also studying developing a made-to-measure business. "Think of offering that sort of service in our great boutique in London. It would be fabulous to see that on Savile Row."
Jil is often called the high priestess of minimalism, though it's a title she's not completely comfortable with. "I think pure would be more the right word. Minimalism without a sense of quality and class doesn't mean very much. It's like this glass of water. We all know there's also sorts of differences between types of water, though we often can't see it."
"In these past three years there have been all these colors, prints and hippie ideas; lots of fantasy at Dolce & Gabbana and others. But I feel a correction is on the way. Anyway, I will do my own visions," Sander stresses.
Sander also bucked a recent unfortunate trend in fashion of designers dissing their predecessors. Asked what she thought of the tenure of Milan Vukmirovic during her three years away, the lady had this to say:
"In these three years I tried to have as much distance as I could. I don't want to criticize. I think it's very hard to take over a line with such a strong vision. But I believe for him that it was a wonderful experience to work with a great atelier. I understand from Mr. (Patrizio) Bertelli that Milan was going to leave anyway, but he has to think of this as a wonderful experience. Sander is like a big truck. It's not easy to drive. But if you see what Milan did when he was here it was okay."
Below are few pictures of what to expect for S/S homme collection.
! Good she's back! 
But who is the man who presented this spring's collection 
? 
Probably her loving son 
I love jill, gald shes back!
i'm quite useless 
