HISTORY OF MODERN CLASSICS JIL SAMDER
HISTORY OF MODERN CLASSICS
JIL SAMDER
COMELY HANDBAG FACTORY
Part of a wave of minimalist designers who came to prominence in the 1990s, Jil Sander was the lone woman among the likes of Helmut Lang, Martin Margiela and Calvin Klein. Her designs were never girly but they were more empathetic to women’s demands.
She gained a reputation as a designer who made clothes particularly trouser suits that would make women feel elegant and confident at work. For the post power dressing decade, her work wear whispered rather than yelled.
Beginning as a fashion journalist, the German born Sander set up her company in 1968 in Hamburg. She showed her collection in Milan in 1973, then Paris the following year, though with little success. Sander’s story is a slow one, perhaps because it took time for fashion to catch up with the quiet radicalism of her designs.
By the 1990s however, it had. Sander’s work in the decade was successful not only because she belonged to the more approachable end of it. Rather than being austere, her clothes were refined in both senses of the work.
By 1995 turnover stood at nearly 200 million and her clothes were sold into over 400 stores worldwide. Sander’s company was bought by the Prada group in 1999, and then the trouble started.
After wrangles with Prada CEO Patrizio Betelli, Sander left the company months later. Returning briefly in 2003 for three seasons, and then again in 2012, only to leave in 2013, Sander is now believed to have retired. Both designer and brand, however, are still highly respected.