Upon stepping into Jil Sander’s show space, genuine film and art fans must have thought they were entering a familiar place suspended between Henri Schmitt’s sets for the Arpels’ garden in Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle, the cubist environment of the Masoch Club in Elio Petri's La decima vittima and Mondrian's Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue. The white set featured indeed geometric sunken spaces filled with black, blue and yellow gravel that created the perfect environment for Raf Simons’ designs.
The show opened with a series of white nurse-like linen collarless sheer dresses and coat dresses decorated at the back with small jewelled clips that injected into the collection a spa/beauty parlour mood (think Claudia Cardinale as virginal spa attendant in Fellini’s 8 ½ and you get an idea).
Fluo paisley prints (or brocade paisley) in pink, green and blue on white background or in back on nude introduced a lighter and playful theme (borrowed from the Arpels' garden?), though the shapes remained more or less rigorous with below-the-knee dresses matched with mid-calf length laced boots.
Blue and white gingham trousers and skirts, a green, purple and blue dress with a sheer full skirt and sweaters with intarsia motifs inspired by Picasso’s ceramics (with many thanks to the artist’s family in the notes…so no copyright infringement, no pilfering and no stealing here…) introduced the second part of the collection that closed with a series of bright white strapless and shirt cotton dresses with full skirts dedicated to the minimalist Jil Sander brides.
Interestingly enough, tailoring was used to add a sensual element with an architectural or optical illusion twist: at times conservatively strict dresses had low backs while jackets had cutaway openings at the front; perforated knits and dresses called to mind the designs of the gates of the Arpels’ villa in Tati’s Mon Oncle and a navy dress was matched with a jacket with off-centre buttons that made it look like a one-piece outfit.
It was impossible not to detect a cinematic mood, not only in the soundtrack that featured music from assorted ‘60s movies, but also in smaller elements like Stephen Jones’ hats. The milliner, who collaborated for the first time with Simons, came up with bizarre cotton hats with net veils that had many people in the audience speculating about their origin and, while some called them veiled ski hats, others opted for the rather bizarre “veiled beanies” definition, though they somehow called to mind the shape of Madame Arpel’s house turban.
As a whole the show and the collection perfectly summarised what Jil Sander still stands for, that is simplicity, minimalism, purity and a passion for modernist couture. In Tati’s film the protagonists – the technologically advanced Arpel family – live in an automated and almost robotic house and surround themselves with minimalist pieces of furniture. Gerard, the Arpels’ son, prefers to spend time with his uncle Monsieur Hulot who lives in an old fashioned building favouring a traditional lifestyle and classic clothes.
Maybe Simons is a bit like Hulot, living in a dichotomic world, yet, his secret stands in not fighting and rejecting the modern, but in embracing and carefully mixing and combining together in equal measures both traditional and modern trends.
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