Jil Sander Fall 2011/12

And so it begins!  The Fall 2011 menswear season kicked off this week, first starting off in Florence with Pitti, then traveling to Milan for the menswear shows.  One of the first collections to show in Milan is Jil Sander.  Jil Sander always has a minimalist take on fashion, with a slow and methodical evolution of the brand from season to season.  This season, the structured rigorous suiting that we've seen in the last several collections was replaced with an ease and unstructured quality.  The silhouette evolved to have more ease, the shoulder was dropped a bit, everything was less snug. The biggest update for me came through in the use of color, which will be a major trend for this Fall season. For the past three menswear seasons, color has become very somber, taking its direction from a very strong military influence. Last season, we saw some of the more directional brands begin to play with color, including Jil Sander. This season, color took a dramatic shift, with most of the collection playing between the expected dark palette of black and navy and injecting some super saturated brights and primary colors. Overall, the effect is quite refreshing. It's good to see designers realize that we men need some fun in our lives, too!