FASHION : A Secret’s Out : Toiling Away in Near Obscurity, Jil Sander Built Her Austere, Fluid Designs Into an Empire

Jil Sander is a hot property in the fashion world, but you’d never know it.

Even with her name attached to clothing sold in more than 120 stores and 10 franchise boutiques around the world, a best-selling perfume and a successful cosmetics line, few Americans know who Sander is.

Perhaps that’s because she runs her business, which she expects to do $200 million in sales this year, out of Hamburg, Germany, her hometown. Not Paris, Milan or New York. She might as well be working in Fargo, N.D.

Sander tried building her fashion empire the traditional French way back in the ‘70s, showing her clothes in the lineup with the big names. But it was a time of extravagance and emerging Japanese influence. A young gun from the Asia, Issey Miyake, and Parisian Claude Montana were dueling for the Saint Laurent throne. The German designer’s severe, minimalist clothes were virtually ignored. So Heidemarie Jiline Sander returned home and “built up, by myself, a company,” she says defiantly.

Toiling away in obscurity, Sander began to make converts. Now, with a U.S. ad campaign featuring models-of-the-moment Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington under way, she’s the buzz.

American women of style are discovering her, she says, naming Jacqueline Onassis and Barbra Streisand as customers. Her austere clothing--architecturally fluid designs constructed of luxury fabrics--is carried by I. Magnin and Bergdorf Goodman. And she personally hawks her new fragrance, No. 4, at perfume counters; it’s a top seller at I. Magnin’s Beverly Hills and San Francisco stores.

Prices in her signature collection may reach $500 for a blouse and $2,000 for a suit, though tags as high as $7,000 have been seen on the latter.

“Beautiful things give you strength,” says Sander, who has no interest in doing a less expensive secondary line. “If a customer has a refined piece in their hands, they see the quality. They know it is not throwaway clothes.”

Sander puts a lot of stock in substance over sparkle, creating clothes to last a lifetime. But if a customer simply must change her wardrobe every season or so, Sander hopes her designs get passed along to a relative.

Her own style leans toward ecclesiastical spareness: minimal makeup and accessories, dark pantsuits, pristine white blouses. Next to Sander, most women look blowzy and over-accessorized.

In Los Angeles recently as the designer of honor at I. Magnin, Beverly Hills, Sander was intent on finding her audience.

“Yesterday (at the I. Magnin luncheon) I saw Faye Dunaway. She has a good style, she has a good head, she’s done good work, and perhaps she fights for something. This is the sort of woman I like, rather than someone over-decorated and over-made up. I don’t dress the women who look like fruit bowls,” Sander says, adding that she sees a strong market for her clothes here.

“You have a new President with a modern wife at his side. She is simpatico and strong. There are others. I will find them.”