RUNWAY: Jil Sander SS12

Raf Simons shocked everyone with his collection for Jil Sander when the brand was the main event at Pitti Uomo. That collection showed colors that were rich and bold; the clothes were cut so magnificently that combining the tailorng with the hyper-saturated colors were an editors dream. Then the color trend caught on: Burberry Prorsum showed their Fall/Winter 2011 collection and it was littered with similarly rich and bold colors. Raf Simons has been, and will always be, a trendsetter. We have no doubt that this collection will probably be more influential in menswear than most of what we see this season, even though at the superficial level the clothes may seem too bland to stand out because of its penchant for black.

Fast forward to his collection for Jil Sander Spring/Summer 2012. It was evident that Simons had had enough of those colors and took a much more sinister and darker view for Spring/Summer 2012. With slick gelled hair, models strutted down the modern and opaque runway clad with wonderful accessories tied around their necks and bodies. The spirit of Jil Sander has always been minimalist and this collection embodied Sanders' vision but the real draw of the collection was texture: from exotic skins to skin patterns seen on tops to structured jumpers that had a floral effect. We think that texture, more so than black, was the theme of the collection. That being said, the collection will be polarizing with not a lot of grey area: you'll either love it or hate it.