JIL SANDER AND ARC’TERYX ARE REIMAGINING MOUNTAINWEAR

©Jil Sander

Whichever type of cold weather enjoyer you are, a new collaboration from Jil Sander and Arc’teryx is taking sportswear-infused mountain gear to stylish new heights. Arc’teryx, the Vancouver-based outdoors company with a cult-like following beyond its mountain athlete customer base, has paired up with Jil Sander+. That's the line launched by Jil Sander creative directors Luke and Lucie Meier in 2019. It's intended to complement their monastically pure mainline with clothing designed for life outside the city.

Lucie and Luke Meier, Jil Sander’s husband-and-wife creative directors, both grew up enjoying winter sports but could never find garments that balanced high performance with high aesthetic quality. Tapping Arc’teryx’s technical knowledge, the designs see new volumes and shapes engineered especially for winter sports but with chic, flattering silhouettes. Using a palette of ice-white, carbon black and a blue-grey found in the depths of glaciers, the items also feature contrast detailing in bright orange and red.

The collection comprises three jackets (one men’s, one women’s and one unisex), a pair of bibbed trousers, and a Gore-Tex onesie. All items are embroidered with both brands’ logos, Arc’teryx’s signature skeletal bird logo flying high atop Jil Sander’s sans serif. Each piece is optimised for function when temperatures drop, with waterproof and breathable Gore-tex Pro fabric accented with overlays of luxe weatherproof leather. Small details like trims, pockets, and zippers, have all been carefully studied and tweaked for maximum slope performance.

Despite a rising stock among the fashion set over the last few years, Arc’teryx has been pretty publicly staunch in its anti-hype stance. When the Hadid sisters modeled some Virgil Abloh-modified Arc’teryx rain jackets in the Off-White Fall 2020 show during pre-lockdown Paris Fashion Week last year, the brand later dismissed it as an unofficial nod. At Jil Sander, the Meiers have also been relatively careful in their collaborations. They designed field jackets for Mackintosh in 2019, and sandals for Birkenstocks this past summer by way of Jil Sander+. “We really only want to do things that make sense, to create something that we couldn’t otherwise do ourselves. So it’s not purely about working with brands that somehow have a parallel objective for marketing,” Luke Meier told the New York Times this week. “We never want to just have two logos on a product. That’s not really that interesting, to be honest.”