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January 16, 2006

You could read the first jacket on the catwalk as a manifesto of Raf Simons' ascension to the creative directorship of Jil Sander. It was proudly boxy, with a single button set high, and shoulders broad and slightly dropped. In other words, a new proportion for a label that has specialized in the lean, youthful silhouette that currently prevails in menswear.

New proportions, of course, are Simons' specialty (that boxiness creates a billow in the back, for instance), but with his first collection for this house, he also managed to honor the woman whose name is on the label. Sober but covetable clothes (the knitwear was especially impressive in that regard), intriguing techno-fabrics—these were signatures of Jil herself, and the way Simons evoked them suggests there is a natural compatibility between the two designers' sensibilities that makes this particular coup more logical than most. Just check the way a creamy beige leather jacket with shearling collar slyly captured the haute bourgeois edge of the Jil aesthetic.

Still, there was no doubt this was a Simons show: it was clear in the gray that he favored, in the almost military precision of the dominant jacket-trouser-and-white-shirt combination, and in the soundtrack, which included a piano reinterpretation of a track by Aphex Twin, one of his favorite musicians.

— Tim Blanks