1980s Power-Dressing at Jil Sander

MILAN, Italy — Rodolfo Paglialunga loves shoulders for spring. Line-backer pads, not the bared, sun-kissed kind. Call it the Gvasalia Effect all over again, except that Paglialunga insisted his fixation with the silhouette started with the movie stars of the 1940s and their confident glamour.

But, with a soundtrack toploaded with Duran Duran and Gary Numan and a snippet of Kim Basinger's muttering from 9½ Weeks, it was much more the power-dressed 1980s that the latest Jil Sander show evoked. And, in the evocation, it proved how difficult it is to give this look a contemporary spin, Demna aside. Paglialunga's response was to supersize the whole kit and caboodle, not just jacket shoulders, but banker stripe sleeves that trailed past wrists, shirt-tails and pant crotches that drooped to the knee.

And then, as counterpoint, he added Issey Miyake to the mix: the signature Miyake plissé, the rounded sleeve shape, which could, I guess, be construed as a further meditation on fun with shoulders. The plissé made a couple of fine asymmetrical skirts but the rest of it was so odd, so unbalanced that the mind reeled and, in reeling, almost wished that Paglialunga had offered as an alternative the navy tee, shorts and knee socks combo in which he made his bow. At least that look made sense.