| COMB |

Milan Case Study: Raf Simons for Jil Sander

Raf Simons has designed for Jil Sander as her first formal successor to the brand since Fall 2005. A former industrial design student who stumbled into fashion design upon the heels of the Antwerp Six (van Noten, Demeulmeester, etc.), Simons and his work for Jil Sander is nothing short of stimulating and has become something of a hallowed Milan highlight in my mind.

In fact I find Simons’ direction for Jil Sander even more intriguing than his orientation with his own eponymous menswear brand and secondary diffusion line Raf by Raf Simons because he has the task of harmoniously merging his own youth-centric aesthetic with an established brand famous for its no-nonsense, minimalistic coordinates for the corporate woman. Theoretically it shouldn’t work, but it does. And how so. Although his Belgian roots reputedly assure a certain pragmatism, Simons experimentation with fabric continues to impress with its quiet innovation.

In his work for Jil Sander I still consider him an industrial designer by his focused, singular way of exploring the boundaries of material (cloth) and its subsequent construction. It’s the same lesson every season: he chooses an element, whether a material or a technique, and like an engineer, of trains or of science, pushes it to a place that it has not visited before. It’s a process that I wish more designers would explore; rather than choosing a theme and designing around it, why can’t we choose a particular element or construct and allow it to organically spawn a narrative of its own?

According to a recent interview in The Observer, it was exactly this process of abstraction that attracted him to the Jil Sander brand. “The ideas are very much about material and development, certain ideas that are abstracted to an aesthetic outcome which an audience with an understanding of Jil Sander will link to… whoa, that sounds complicated . . . I mean I could tell a story very directly, and people would understand that story. That’s something we will never do here. I would do a dress that would link to culture or the environment, but not in a way that you would immediately see.”

In the 90’s Jil Sander was hailed as a minimalist revolutionary in class with the likes of Calvin Klein, Helmut Lang, and Giorgio Armani. They dared to carry clean lines and studied subtraction into a time after the maximalist 80’s, shedding statement shoes, stockings, and gloves for perhaps, as an example, neutral heels under a simple, approachable sheath dress. For something so complicated and measured to seem oh-so-straightforward and chic, craftsmanship was priority. Good luck taping up a fallen hemline or covering a wonky seam ten minutes before a show on those catwalks.

I have a pet theory that fashion is the application of dress on the principle that we, in our our impulse to cover our bodies, creatively imagine ourselves sleeker than our skins. On that principle, however, fashion minimalism is a problematic and difficult to define: what one considers fundamental another considers frivolous. It’s not a matter of what, or even how much, you wear– just ask a Norwegian Sami girl bundled in wool and reindeer skins if her look’s cinching belt is a bit much. But are the grommets that pattern it?

What is minimalism today, and is it understood universally? Is it economy of means? An intellectual edit? A sigh for simplicity in an intricate and ambiguous world?

| | | | |

Review: To better understand Simons’ approach to Jil Sander’s trademark minimalism, let’s briefly consider the 2008 lines before delving into his most recent (and, in my opinion, his most accomplished) 2009 spring collection for the brand:

Spring 2008: translucence was the word. Vivid color transformed by the thinnest sheath of organza or tulle, the layering was a winter concept gone clinical and rigorous, light, clean, and spring-airy. What was above affected or made more visible what was beneath. There was a palpable but diligently calculated sensuality to it all. The effect was pure and elegant– exactly the Simons order.

Spring 2008

In his Fall 2008 collection, he provided his team with a technical challenge: “I asked the tailors to work on dresses, and the dressmakers to get involved with the tailoring. I wanted to see how we could use heavy tweed in a fresh, elegant, architectural way.” The result? The rigidity of tweed transformed dresses to feminine-strong Joan-of-Arc columnar armor, while the cashmere cuts on coats looked liked thin slices of butter slipping off the body.

Fall 2008

| | | | |

Now on to this season: WWD provides an excellent quality video of the Spring 09 show that I highly recommend watching (just press the blue “watch video” button): http://www.wwd.com/fashion-season-microsite/spring-ready-to-wear-2009/review/jil-sander-rtw-spring-2009-1794935

But if you’d simply rather watch the youtube version:

Simons chose to focus on fringe for 2009, and he was by no means alone. In Milan, Alberta Ferretti, Alessandro Dellacqua, Aquilano e Rimondi and others all had their slicing, swaying say. But I was bothered that most designers’ inspiration and many critics’ interpretation of their collections was an immediate hurrah! to the 1920’s, as if only during the Jazz Age people discovered the movement and assertion of space that fringe allows.

As Catherine Amoroso Leslie writes in Needlework Through History: “Throughout time and geography, fringes, tassels, and pompoms have served both aesthetic and spiritual functions. They symbolized love, status, and religious devotion. The swish and sway of fringes, tassels, and pompoms emphasize movement and were often used to provide protection from evil spirits. Their color and placement can indicate allegiance, rank, and marital status.”

Because I did not receive the liner notes traditionally handed out before shows, I’m going to have to trust WWD when they report Simons was indeed inspired by the Twenties (knock off a point for me) as well as the sculptor Constantin Brancusi (score one) and African tribal adornment (score two).

But in regard to the tribal inspiration: should we have reservations about the Western use or copying of long-held textile traditions to fulfill the market for exotica until the look, inevitably, loses its corporate zing?

Joanne B. Eicher, a writer in National Geographic Fashion, doesn’t believe so. “Rather than viewing borrowed items combined with indigenous ones as ridiculous or humorous, we must understand each instance within its own context and then can interpret it as a creative ensemble. Such new configurations have gone through a process called “cultural authentication,” which involves choosing something worn by others outside the culture and incorporating it as an important part of a new combination. These new combinations visibly display human creativity and humans’ ability to enjoy change.”

She cites Western to non-Western dress adoptions as proof of the universal appeal of borrowing another culture’s dress: the Otavalo women in the Andes wore bowler hats with their handwoven skirts, straw boater hats and blazers were popular with the Itsekiri men in Nigeria, and apparently it’s not uncommon for women in India to wear Western style men’s button-down shirts with their saris.

Besides, in Simons’ case, I don’t believe his use of fringe was too literal. He’s making suits for the working woman for goodness’ sake, can’t there be a little humor, and more than a dash of dignity, if she so happens to shimmy and shake around the office? It’s formality and virility in one. I wouldn’t mind seeing a boss of mine wear this piece in particular:

But I don’t intend to imply that his clothes were not sexy. They were. Very. Which is quite a leap from when Simons began designing for Jil Sander in 2005 and critics around were questioning his ability to make clothes for his first real take on the female form. There were catsuits and bare backs, and every sliver, slice, or panel of cloth prompted a breeze to show what it was teasingly, but fervently, hiding underneath. The gathered silk fringe on some dresses undulated on the body like waves, but even wearing those models remained saucily but strongly covered up. I wouldn’t be surprised if this collection becomes a bestseller under Simons’ hand.

Now I’ll address the Brancusi crush, one that Rick Owens and Alexander McQueen have also referenced. The Romanian artist had a talent for presenting folk and indigenous carving techniques in a simple yet sophisticated arrangement of materials that were quiet, elegant, and modern. Wood was especially important for getting him out of his peasant hole and into art school, and from there provided a literal and figurative foundation for his most accomplished work. Why do fashion designers like Simons fly to his smooth honeyed stumps? I believe it’s a combination of Brancusi’s rags-to-a-reputation life story and the ascetic, unrefined primitivism his work evokes as contrast to industry gloss.

But enough speculation. Simons’ earring collaboration with Damiani held a hint of the sculptor’s “Bird in Space” piece, but it also suggested it was a single fringe of metal shot blood raw beautiful through the ear. The shoes at Jil Sander exuded the strongest influence:

So Brancusi was inspired by folk art, Simons was inspired Brancusi and “tribal adornment.” Both are artists known and praised for their minimalistic modernism. But what do their work ultimately have to do with defining minimalism?

Business, necessity, decoration, wearability, ergonomics: where does each term begin and end?