JIL SANDER UNVEILS SPRING 2022 MEN’S COLLECTION AS PART OF PARIS FASHION WEEK

by Stephen Garner

Jil Sander unveiled its new spring/summer 2022 menswear collection this weekend as part of Paris Fashion Week: Men’s.

According to the brand, this season is a “sharp urban collection about the right, and duty, to individuality and imagination. About multicultural cities that lead us to appreciate and absorb diversity; to combine different things, different facets of ourselves, in ways that are unprecedented and effortless at the same time.”

Creative directors Lucie and Luke Meier always find new forms to balance opposites. Japanese wool jackets, shirt-jackets, and coats are straight and voluminous. Overdyed cotton and linen flight suits, with removable sleeves, and comfortable utility trousers are worn under one-and-a-half breasted tailored overcoats.

Strong colors, large pockets, contrasting copper zippers, a cheetah print on a brushed wool pullover, scarves in fleecy pure silk, and jewels – silver necklaces, brooches, ear cuffs, and earrings – give all of the looks extra personality and an edge.

As for bags, a canvas and suede two-color enlarged backpack, a squared tote bag in natural vegetable tanned leather, tactile and plump waist bags, and supple leather totes with rivet joinery, are all both functional and luxurious, complementing the spirit of the collection.

The color palette, between off-white and charcoal, is uplifting. Soft yellow, pale blue, mint milk, pink, lilac, light orange, sage, tobacco, and cocoa are used as contrast colors. And, an all-leather look of trousers and shirt is made in red.

Color blocks knitted in different cotton, linen, silk, and wool yarns are balanced to compose precious knitwear. Graphic elements appear throughout the collection in a large diagonal white stripe crosses the front of a soft wool mélange shirt-jacket. Connections are sharp, detailed, textured, tactile. A wheat-pasted shop advertisement is turned into a pattern embroidered all over a field jacket and overall, or into individual artworks, unconventionally placed and exploded in scale.

It’s a collection that serves as a reference to the city, to art, to the power of looking and finding beauty in the mundane.