Milan Fashion Week: menswear

Jil Sander, Spring/Summer '09 (scroll down to read the review)
Jil Sander
Raf Simons, just back from New York for the opening of the first of the new generation Jil Sander stores under his direction, wanted to give the label's menswear more of seasonal identity, something he started last season with the marble prints.

According to the designer, this collection is 'an abstraction of nature'. Colours like sunflower yellow, sky blue and cloud grey were taken away from their visual context and blocked into minimal tailoring. There were retro references in there, like the safari suit, but Simons is clever to disguise his references as he does not want the collection 'to be antique'. Use of jersey gave an ease, and tiny triangular and circular shaped perforations in suede and shirtings gave a lightness.

Standouts were the suits, jackets as light as shirts, slim pants finishing with micro turn-ups on the ankle, and the knitwear with contrasting abstracted zig-zag borders. The best news we heard all week is that the company has finally found a location for a store in London, after an exhaustive search. Lucky us.