Jil Sander has split with Luke and Lucie Meier after seven years. The Milan-based house announced the end of the couple’s tenure as co-creative directors in a statement on 26 February, just after their final show for Autumn/Winter 2025.
In the statement, OTB Group chairman Renzo Rosso thanked the Meiers for their “vision, passion for excellence, and dedication to the brand”. Jil Sander was acquired by Renzo Rosso’s OTB Group (home also to Diesel, Maison Martin Margiela, Marni and Viktor & Rolf) in April 2021.
As well as shaping a freshly precise iteration of abstracted minimalism while at Jil Sander, the Meiers’s by-current-standards lengthy tenure was notable for making them the only married co-creative directors in luxury fashion. “The designers seize this occasion to express their heartfelt gratitude to OTB and the Jil Sander teams who have consistently dedicated their energy, passion, and talent to this project, and are proud of the work they have accomplished alongside such wonderful people. A special thanks as well to Mr. Rosso,” the statement reads.
A successor at Jil Sander was not named. In the most recent figures available, Sander reported a 17.3 per cent year-on-year sales increase in 2023. OTB Group did not break out sales figures for the brand in 2024; Group sales declined 3.1 per cent for the year.
The eponymous founder was 24 when she started the business in 1968, opening her first store in Hamburg. With the introduction of womenswear in the 1970s and later menswear in the 1990s, she established her own highly influential codes of romantic and highly crafted androgyny. She sold a majority stake to Prada in 1999 before leaving the brand for the first of three times in 2000. She was lured back again in 2003 and stayed for two years before being succeeded by Raf Simons. He proved a brilliant creative captain, but was himself spirited away by Dior in 2011. So Sander returned once again, only to depart in 2013 for personal reasons. The Meiers came on board following the tenure of Rodolfo Paglialunga.
The couple first met in 2001 as students at Polimoda in Florence and enjoyed diversely successful career paths before becoming professionally wedded at Sander. Intensely thoughtful, they have brought stability back to the label while materially engaging with craft through design to create a vision of Sander that was simultaneously true to its liberating origins but also specific to their vision.
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
