Lucie and Luke Meier take charge of design at Jil Sander

By

Dominique Muret

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Apr 7, 2017

Lucie and Luke Meier are the new creative directors at Jil Sander. On Friday 7th April the German label, acquired in 2008 by the European subsidiary of Japanese group Onward, has confirmed the rumours which have circulated in the last few months about the design duo's impending arrival. Jil Sander had also recently announced the end of its collaboration with Rodolfo Paglialunga, in charge of design since April 2014.

Lucie and Luke Meier will work together on the label's men's and women's collections, starting with the women's collection for Spring/Summer 2018. Each designer will contribute their own expertise, both in couture and sportswear, exploiting their different, complementary sensibilities, and showing that two heads can be better than one, as recently examined by FashionNetwork in a survey.

Partners in their personal life, Lucie and Luke Meier have never worked together before. Lucie was born in Switzerland from an Austrian mother and a German father, while Luke hails from Canada, the son of an English mother and Swiss father. They met in Florence, at the Polimoda fashion academy, and have lived between Paris and New York since.

Lucie Meier was head designer for the haute couture and women's ready-to-wear collections at Christian Dior, having been co-opted by Raf Simons (who, before taking charge of Dior, was Creative Director at Jil Sander). Last year she took centre stage as creative director ad interim of the women's collections together with Serge Ruffieux (who since then has moved to Carven), in the hiatus between the departure of Raf Simons in October 2015 and the arrival of Maria Grazia Chiuri in July 2016. Formerly she worked at Balenciaga under Nicolas Ghesquière, and at Louis Vuitton in the Marc Jacobs era.

Luke Meier studied international business and finance at Georgetown University, Washington DC, then at the University of Oxford, before moving to New York and shifting his allegiance to fashion, attending the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

There he met James Jebbia, the founder of Supreme, for which he became head designer for 8 years. In 2013 Meier embarked on a new adventure with emerging menswear label OAMC, which premièred on the Parisian catwalks last January, showcasing a new luxury style for the modern gentleman. Luke Meier is the label's Creative Director, having founded it with Arnaud Faeh, former Creative Director at Carhartt, who is in charge of sales and administration.