Rodolfo Paglialunga appointed Creative Director at Jil Sander
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He will work from the label's headquarters in Milan and his first collection for the fashion label will be revealed this September, during Milan Fashion Week, where he will show his Spring/Summer 2015 collection, after the Fall/Winter collection for 2014-2015 was designed by Jil Sander’s in-house creative team.
Rodolfo Paglialunga to "continue to drive innovation and modernity" into Jil Sander
“We are very confident about this decision”, said Alessandro Cremonesi, CEO of Jil Sander Group. “We have identified the right talent that with coordinated assets in terms of personality and design skill will be able to raise our creative excellence to achieve new fashion marks. We trust that Rodolfo Paglialunga’s refined and cosmopolitan approach will be instrumental to reinforce our core values and continue to drive innovation and modernity into the heritage of the brand.”
“I became interested in fashion through the magazines my friends' mothers used to read,” revealed the designer during an interview with Italian Vogue in 2010. After Paglialunga graduated from high school with a specialization in art, he left his home town of Tolentino, in the Marche area, and moved to Milan in pursue of his passion, where he studied at the Marangoni Institute before he began working with Romeo Gigli. “We were in loft, a real office of creativity where anyone could experiment and make suggestions.”
Then in 1996, he joined Prada and began working as Miuccia Prada assistant before becoming design director for women's wear. Working at Prada for nearly thirteen years helped the designer understand the industry and how a “true and very complex and structured company works”. Then in early 2009, the new owner of French haute couture label Vionnet, appointed Paglialunga as the new creative director of the label, in an attempted to blow some new life into the 102 year old fashion label.
However by fall 2011, Paglialunga had left the haute couture label and a press release stipulating the mutual termination of his contract was published a few days after Vionnet's Spring/Summer 2012 show. Now the Italian designer is back in the saddle and ready to start anew in his new role.
Rodolfo Paglialunga to bring Jil Sanders to "the next level"
“I'm deeply honored to have the opportunity to take on this role. I have boundless admiration for the brand as I strongly believe in its pure vision and values,” commented Paglialunga on his new appointment. “My aim is to carry forward the fusion between sophistication, luxury and innovation and bring the house [to] the next level.”
Paglialunga will be following in the footsteps of Raf Simons, who was creative director for the label from July 2005 to February 2012, when he left his role to join Dior, as the label's founder Jil Sanders decided to returned to her label, only to leave 18 months later. Although there were a number of concerns for the brands future after the third departure of Sanders, Cremonsei remains positive about the future of the fashion label.
“The label has not been tied to its founder for a long time. A number of different designers have been in charge, and we are at ease about the strength and potential of the brand. It has an evolving, independent history," explained Cremonesi to WWD, “This is a multi year agreement [with Paglialunga], and we reason in the medium-long term.”
Cremonesi stressed that he believes that the Italian designer will make sure that “an evolution, not a revolution” of the label, and that the decision to take on Paglialunga as the label's new creative director was an “autonomous decision,” made within the company.
Photos: Jil Sander ss14 campaign, Rodolfo Paglialunga