Lucie Meier

Lucie Meier

By instinct

by Christiane Arp

If Lucie Meier wanted another way to express herself creatively apart from fashion design, she says, she would not choose words. Just a few words are all she needs to reveal her inner self. When asked to give an example of perfect design, she only needs one: “nature”. This response instantly provides an insight into her creative cosmos. It is not a romantic transfiguration but an intuitive dialogue that strives for a material, creative, natural solution – originally taking inspiration from a work of art, a book, perhaps even a feeling, “a moment in my life”. For seven years now, she has brought this creative process to bear in partnership with her husband Luke at Jil Sander, setting new standards (both aesthetic and ethical) in the fashion industry. “Evolution in progress” is how she describes it. She cannot bear the thought of creating something new just for the sake of newness: “Everything we create must have a meaning, must touch us.”

The tactile and emotional feeling of clothing fascinated her from an early age. Growing up as Lucie Mennig at the foot of the Matterhorn in Zermatt, where her family – first her parents, now her brother and his wife – still runs the restaurant Zum See in a chalet that is more than 500 years old, Lucie Meier already knew very early on that she wanted to work in fashion one way or another. She caught the bug from her mother, who loves fabrics and fashion – especially Jil Sander.

Her first steps into the fashion world took her to Polimoda in Florence, where she began to study fashion marketing. This turned out to be a brief stint as it quickly became clear to her that this area of fashion was not really where she wanted to be. Nevertheless, her time at the Italian university set the course for her later life because it was here that she met and fell in love with a young Canadian with Swiss roots named Luke Meier. They moved to New York together, and Lucie started working for Nylon magazine. She decided to study fashion design and applied to the École de la Chambre Syndicale in Paris. She then joined Louis Vuitton as an intern under Marc Jacobs. “An incredible experience,” she says, which turned into a five-year commitment as a designer in the brilliant fashion visionary’s team. Her next stop was no less high-profile: at Balenciaga, she created the legendary label’s show collection with Nicolas Ghesquière. A rollercoaster of creative genius: “With Marc Jacobs, we created an entire collection in three weeks, whereas Nicolas Ghesquière and I took six months.” She ultimately found her way to Dior, becoming head designer of the summer team under Raf Simons. After his departure at the end of 2015, she ran the couture house with Serge Ruffieux on an interim basis until Maria Grazia Chiuri took over in 2016.

The call to become creative director of Jil Sander in 2017 was a wish fulfilled – “sooner than expected”: not only was it her favourite label from childhood, it was also an opportunity to work with her husband. The professional backgrounds of the two could not be more different, but they gelled together as a team very quickly. Lucie creates intuitively straight from her gut, while Luke passionately analyses and researches processes. When working together, he admires “her calmness, her intuition and her absolutely infallible photographic memory”. Together they look for ways to bring meaning and beauty to fashion in an age that seems to push the conventional dichotomy of opulence versus minimalism to ever more absurd extremes, for a way to harness the tension arising from opposites, for a kind of creative essence.

In the complacent fashion world that seeks to attract attention at all costs, Lucie Meier is an exception who is seen and heard precisely because she has calmly found the sort of sustainable creative path that so many others are still frantically searching for.

A lot of it is about new materials, knowing how to use them and finding verifiably sustainable processes, but it is also about contemporary lines with a timeless quality. “We all have closets full of clothes,” says Lucie Meier. “It’s not like anyone necessarily needs a new coat, but you do need something that touches and moves you. I hope that I can give people something good and try to improve people’s everyday lives or make them easier if I can boost their self-confidence in some way.”

Christiane Arp was Editor-in-Chief of German VOGUE from 2003 to 2020. She has a degree in fashion design and is a founding member and chairwoman of the Fashion Council Germany. She is regarded as one of the most important promoters of young design talent and has known Lucie Meier and her husband for many years.