A rare conversation with Jil Sander as she releases her career-spanning monograph, ‘Jil Sander by Jil Sander’

When it comes to legacy, the seminal German fashion designer Jil Sander ‘doesn’t like to presume’ how others might perceive her impact. ‘But “modernity” says a lot,’ she considers. ‘It’s a word that is rarely used these days.’

Sander’s career, which began with the opening of a Hamburg boutique in 1968 and the presentation of her first eponymous womenswear collection in 1973, has been defined by a relentless pursuit of modernity, honing a rigorous and minimal working wardrobe, nonetheless influenced by the midcentury elegance of her parent’s generation. The title of the first Jil Sander fragrance, ‘Pure’, launched in 1979, is another hint as to how she views her approach to design. A counterpoint to the hedonistic, overblown glamour of the 1980s, Sander’s vision was seductive in the way she reduced a garment to its absolute essence. By the 1990s, the rest of the fashion world would catch up.

‘Generally, I don’t like talking about my work,’ the designer admits, talking on the occasion of a new monograph, Jil Sander by Jil Sander, published by Munich-based publisher Prestel. ‘I’d rather demonstrate it, and let people try it on.’

Through the process of working on the book, however – an idea that had been percolating since the 2017 retrospective ‘Jil Sander: Present Tense’ at Frankfurt’s Museum of Applied Art – Sander found that it was illuminating to look backwards, and discuss, a career that has spanned over five decades. ‘I was surprised by the strong feminine side of my work,’ she says. ‘Some voices categorised me as a designer for business wear. But I was always interested in changing the general performance of men and women – I didn’t look for an androgynous appearance as such, as often happens in female businesswear. I wanted the gender element to be more subtle, I looked for a more intellectual sensuality.’

She traces this back to the 1950s and 1960s, the decades in which Sander grew up (she was born in 1943 in Wesselburen, on Germany’s North Sea coastline, during the Second World War). ‘Tailoring was still big in those days. People had a sense for cuts and patternmaking, and quality fabrics. What was lacking in my view was modernity – especially in women’s clothing. [I wanted] a total overhaul of patternmaking. The goal was to create class and understatement that were in sync with the age. My immediate personal motive for designing fashion was to escape the fallback on historical gender types in women’s fashion.’

Sander worked on the book personally, alongside Dutch graphic designer Irma Boom and German journalist and scholar Ingeborg Harms, who wrote the monograph’s various texts after extensive conversations with the designer. ‘I’d made a book to accompany “Present Tense”, but I needed another one to try out more experimental ways [of working]. We had to find a form for it, visually and regarding the text. I wanted it to look fresh and vivid, relating to today’s ways of looking at things.’

With the book’s design, Sander says she wants to replicate the experience of being at a runway show. The kaleidoscopic images – which comprise runway photographs, backstage documentary, campaigns, portraits and store interiors – are often tightly cropped in on details, turned on their side or spliced together into diptychs. ‘I wanted to recreate some of the excitement of being a front-row guest at a fashion show... Your eye wanders, you can’t take it all in, you zoom in on little things, you are overwhelmed by rhythm, sensuality, colour and movement.’

These images are divided into loose sections, delineated by ‘quieter’ white pages of text, which come together to tell a story of Jil Sander’s life and design philosophy (sections include ‘Light and Shadow’ and ‘Future Spaces’, alongside other more esoteric thematics, like ‘Stonehenge and Spiral’, a consideration of the use of extremes in her work). ‘Jil Sander does not think of her work in terms of a chronological autobiography,’ writes Harms. ‘She has always been focused on the present and looks at what lies ahead.’

‘The sections came about naturally,’ says Sander. ‘The imagery suggested them. We needed some order to make it all digestible.’

Ultimately, she defines the book as an ‘experiment’. ‘I knew that I didn’t want to achieve a classic coffee table book, so it was trial and error until we got there. In the end, the mood of the book is true to the frenzy which overtook us every time we prepared a show. Those hectic moments when it takes all the energy you have to stay on course. The book packages all the shows into one.’

In 1999, Prada would purchase a 75 per cent stake in the Jil Sander label; she resigned not long after, in 2000. Sander would return to her eponymous brand twice: in 2003, she undertook a two-year stint before being succeeded by Raf Simons, and in 2012, after his departure, she would remain until the presentation of a S/S 2014 collection, before leaving for good. Collaborations with Uniqlo – under the J+ line – have taken place since, most recently in November 2021. That same year, Jil Sander the brand was acquired by Renzo Rosso’s OTB Group. The current designers are wife-and-husband duo Lucie and Luke Meier. ‘I am following fashion, of course, but being a designer myself, I am a bit spoiled,’ says Sander.

As for why now felt like the right time to publish this career-spanning monograph, Sander says it has in fact been a long time coming. ‘I wished to publish it earlier, but it takes time to get things right. [Though] it may not be a bad moment now to bring it out, since we are overwhelmed by fashion information, and it helps to condense one’s message into the concise format of a book.’

In the book’s brief introduction, Sander elaborates further. ‘Looking back, I realise I was part of a broader reawakening that influenced my childhood in Hamburg,’ she says, referring to the rebuilding of Germany after the ravages of war and Nazi rule. ‘I was witness to a democratic reconstruction, a clearing away of anything standing in the way of a better future. We now find ourselves in another period of upheaval and renewal. I hope it inspired this book.’

Jil Sander by Jil Sander, designed by Irma Boom, texts by Ingeborg Harms, is published by Prestel. Out now in the UK (available from waterstones.com) and on 3 December 2024 in the United States (preorder at barnesandnoble.com/).

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