Phoebe Philo left behind an undeniable hole in the fashion industry following her departure from Céline. Along with the é, she took with her an understanding of the woman who found harmony in dissonance. Her woman was modern and classic, super cool and super chic, androgynous and feminine, equally a minimalist and a maximalist. Theoretically, many designers in fashion today are also trying to find the middle ground within these binaries.
However, few are actually achieving it.
With conglomerate heads setting their financial expectations high (even in this pandemic), designers are now finding ways to be everything for everyone every season. Kim Jones is a perfect example of this. While there are a few common threads connecting the collections Jones has created over the last two years at Dior Men, his pursuit of zeigesity novelty gets conflated with creativity and innovation—an issue that proliferates across brands, big and small. And even when there’s a consistent aesthetic, à la Hedi Slimane’s slim cuts at Celine, it often feels commercial beyond redemption.
It’s not discussed often enough that so many brands are approaching each new season like they’re having an identity crisis. Many companies have gotten used to creating collections that render their previous season completely irrelevant and bears too much resemblance to other brands to have any semblance of specificity to the designer, or the house, for the sake of trends alone. What used to be a friendly sartorial dialectic re “what’s in right now” between designers and customers, is now a toxic relationship between pandering brands and blasé consumers. I miss the this-is-for-you-and-f*ck-you-if-you-don’t-like-it attitude of early Rei Kawakubo and Marc Jacobs and Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood and Jean-Paul Gaultier. With that mentality they were able to find ways to synthesize what was new with what was them, creating collections that transcended fashion—as an industry and a phenomenon.
It was clear during Phoebe Philo’s tenure at Céline, and especially in the wake of her final collection, that Philo was one of the last guards of designers with such force of vision and skill that they don’t have to be trendy or outrageous or mercurial to be seen.
Since Philo quietly exited the fashion world, countless articles have been published naming potential successors to her unique conceptualization of womenswear. It’s no surprise that some of them worked under the tutelage of Philo at Céline—Bottega Veneta’s Daniel Lee, Peter Do, who owns an eponymous brand—while others—like Jonathan Anderson’s work for Loewe and The Row by the Olsen twins—can’t help but evoke comparisons simply because Philo really did change the game for everyone. However, while there are aesthetic parallels, their conceptual differences set them poles apart.
But there’s one brand that I just can’t stop thinking about, helmed by two designers who have an undeniable strong vision that has renewed my faith in the future of luxury fashion!
Jil Sander by Lucie and Luke Meier has given new life to womenswear that is consistently dynamic, subtly contradictory and beautifully executed.
Since their debut collection, Resort 2018, the husband-wife duo has been very clear about the woman they’re designing for—she’s modern, classic, street and chic with breezy confidence—frankly, she’s just cool as hell.
She doesn’t need monograms or logos to corroborate her taste. Her hemlines don’t change because a designer said so and she likes some wiggle room in her trousers. According to the Meier’s, the Jil Sander woman’s definition of femininity isn’t bound to the mythologies or archetypes created by men—it’s one that’s infinitely more complex and accurate.
The clothes are practical without being boring, elegant without being stuffy and sexy without being performative. Every collection they’ve put forth since they joined the brand in 2017 feels new and fresh and compatible with their self-directed sartorial mandate.
Perhaps it’s because they don’t design by and for hype that Jil Sander’s collections tend to hum, not buzz, on the internet. Yet it seems that’s precisely why the Meier’s have been able to create the clothing they do.
In the absence of unnecessary extravagances for digital affect and algorithm-influenced design they are showing us clothing that is technically beautifully, conceptually compelling and aesthetically striking. They’re showing us fashion in its most beautiful and pure state, revealing once again that fashion doesn’t need to be an industry that outruns the hamster wheel of novelty and insatiable desires, but rather one that provides people with the tools to become slightly more themselves, simply by helping them feel good when they walk down the street and step into a room.
As other brands search high and low for the next “it” color/pattern/texture, I’m more excited to see how Lucie and Luke Meier will continue to reinvigorate rich creams and luxurious blacks at Jil Sander in seasons to come.