Earth Jil Sander 2025

The Jil Sander boutiques are always a special place of tidiness and calm for me. Nothing to distract the eye, no unnecessary frills, the noble fabrics hang in rows along the bright walls, warm light invites you to linger. No hustle, no rummaging through piles of clothes. The spirit of the legendary guardian of aesthetics, the uncompromising nature in terms of design, presentation, and quality is still clearly felt even years after Jil Sander, the Queen of Less, has left.

So I was all the more excited to get to know the new fragrance line from the house in the store on Kö in Düsseldorf, which is meant to represent the style of the house.

The entire line is presented soberly, coolly, and unpretentiously in the center of the store. White bottles on a white background - this type of presentation is of course not surprising and I really like it.

Less appealing to me are the white lacquered metal covers, which leave room for interpretation, but are supposed to protect the (allegedly) mouth-blown bottles from light exposure. A plausible explanation, but I really don't like the implementation. More on that later.

My "objects of desire" were "Black Tea," "Coffea," "Earth," and "Smoke" (although I had already experienced Black Tea through a sharing).

Earth provides grounding. Roses and patchouli are dressed in a Neo-Chypre outfit made of aldehydes. However, I find the soapy quality here rather unpleasant, as it heavily dominates the roses and patchouli and is very scent-defining and even perceptible after hours. For me, it’s not a comforting soapiness of old days, but rather of an excited, somewhat exaggerated nature. A little less soapiness and instead more rose and patchouli would have been much more to my liking. But still, it's nice that even today, one dares to tackle the theme of Chypre at all.

Conclusion: Not my kind of Chypre, but it will certainly find its fans.

Now to the bottles: The glass bottles are quite nice to look at, round and with air bubbles in the glass. They fit well in the hand and the spray heads work flawlessly. Instead of the usual caps, white lacquered metal bells are placed over the bottles to protect the contents from light exposure. This makes sense, but the implementation doesn’t necessarily appeal to my taste, as it looks very "organic." I would be very interested to know what Jil Sander herself would say about this…. But as we know, taste is subjective.

Here’s an excerpt from the American Vogue with Lucie and Luke Meier, chief designers of Jil Sander, regarding the bottles:
Quote: "Of course, the bottles themselves are a statement. Made in collaboration with FormFantasma, each of the glass bottles is perfectly imperfect and is meant to show bubbles and other things that were once considered imperfections in the industry. 'We felt that this gives the bottles a lot of soul and adds a human touch to them,' says Luke. 'Packaging can be very industrial, and we wanted to make it artisanal.'
Instead of a closure, each bottle comes with a white porcelain bell that fits perfectly. It is incredibly satisfying to put it on and take it off. 'It felt very human to create this gesture of putting the cap back on after use,' says Lucie. It is also practical - sunlight can quickly spoil a fragrance, and the opaque cap prevents potential damage. 'We liked the natural colors of the bottle and the fragrance, so this was our solution.'
Formafantasma is a research-oriented design studio that examines the ecological, historical, political, and social forces shaping the design discipline today. Whether designing for a client or developing self-initiated projects, the studio always applies the same rigorous attention to context, processes, and details. Formafantasma's analytical character is reflected in careful visual results, products, and strategies." (End of quote)

All in all, I can say that the tested fragrances did not completely convince me. They are far from bad, but also not the big hit I had hoped for. In terms of quality, they are perfectly fine and certainly worth the €230 for 100ml. The design (apart from the strange "bells") is also acceptable, and the fact that they are refillable bottles fits with the sustainability mindset of our time. Only that the fragrances unfortunately will not remain sustainably in my memory.