If a Hollywood film producer had the urge to finance a blockbuster based on fashion’s current musical chairs moment, the casting auditions would certainly last for months. Designers applying for the starring roles would be in the zillions. Some of the newest to join the revolving door bandwagon are Luke and Lucie Meier, a husband-and-wife duo who have just been appointed Jil Sander’s creative directors. Between the two of them, they’ve amassed fashion experience so extensive, it runs the spectrum from Dior Haute Couture to Supreme.
Lucie Meier, who is Swiss, has worked at Louis Vuitton under Marc Jacobs, at Balenciaga under Nicolas Ghesquière, and at Dior under Raf Simons; the list sounds like a sort of fashion Ivy League. To top it off, she stepped in at Dior’s helm for a few seasons after Simons’s departure, alongside Serge Ruffieux (who has since landed at Carven). Luke Meier is Canadian and has a business and finance background, which he traded for a position as head designer of Supreme in New York. After eight years, he decamped and founded his own menswear line, OAMC, which is shown in Paris. Presumably, the Meiers have no problem finding common ground at the dinner table.
Resort is their first Jil Sander collection; the official runway debut will be in September. Even if the artists weren’t present in the showroom, the collection looked like a promising blend. It already bears their marks—a combination of purity, grace, and thoughtful precision (Lucie) and fast-paced, advanced cool (Luke).
Jil Sander’s style has often been associated with stark minimalism—which wasn’t always the case when the house founder herself was still in the picture. One of the problems for many of the designers who have assumed her mantle has been the emphasis put on rigid, cerebral construction, which was just one of Sander’s hallmarks. The Meiers seem to have a subtler, more nuanced understanding; it apparently worked for both women’s and men’s lines, which were presented together.
Ground zero for the Meiers was the crisp white shirt, taken as a sort of clean foundation. It was the connecting point of the masculine-feminine play between the two lines, where the same item was reworked and repeated in slightly different versions. The silhouette was precise, yet lighter, smoothed by an artsy vibe where folk volumes and details were reduced to archetypal references. A pervasive feminine flair ran throughout the collection. Shiny plastic paillettes cascaded in rivulets from the open sides of a severe, elegant black coat. It was a decorative gesture with an almost couture-like flourish, balanced with relaxed cool.
