Rodolfo Paglialunga has been at the helm of Jil Sander for two years now. He inherited the house at a time of turbulence, after Sander herself made a brief return following Raf Simons’s departure for Dior. Paglialunga’s approach so far has been to hew, more or less, closely to the minimalist Sander ethos. His work isn’t as exacting as hers was, but let’s just say he hasn’t gone out on a limb.
Chalk it up to time passed, but he took some big risks today. They came in the form of exaggerated volume and fabric play. Paglialunga began playing with the former at his Fall show, but here he really took the plunge, accenting all of his tailoring, many of his dresses, and some sweatshirts, too, with enormous shoulder pads. He said he was after a 1940s-by-way-of-the-’80s look. But if these clothes conjure images of Vetements for you, they did for most of the audience as well. Demna Gvasalia’s influence can be seen up and down the runways; he surely doesn’t have a copyright on shoulder pads. Perhaps if Paglialunga had shown some of his looks without them—he did say that they’re removable—the appropriation wouldn’t have felt quite so on the nose.
As it was, the pleated dresses—while pretty in shades of peach, light blue, and yellow— that formed the other side of the Sander story were rather too reminiscent of Issey Miyake’s famous Pleats Please line. Sander’s own heritage would seem to be too rich to resort to such imitation. Paglialunga has proved as much with previous collections for the house.
