Heidemarie Jiline "Jil" Sander (; b. 27 November 1943) is a German minimalist fashion designer and the founder of the Jil Sander fashion house. Early life and education Heidemarie Jiline Sander was born in Wesselburen, Nazi Germany on 27 November 1943. Sander studied at Krefeld School of Textiles (class of 1963) and was a foreign exchange student at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1963 to 1964. After her stint in UCLA, she moved on to New York as a magazine fashion writer. At age 21, she came back to Hamburg to join her younger and older siblings after their father died unexpectedly at the age of 52. Career Jil Sander fashion house Sander founded her own fashion house Jil Sander in Rotherbaum, Hamburg, Germany in 1968 with her mother's sewing machine. Her first collection was for Hoechst, a chemical company, using their trevira fabric. In 1973, she launched a collection under her own brand name. She overcame a poorly received first Jil Sander Paris collection shown at the Plaza Athénée in 1975 and listed her company on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange at the end of the 1980s. She subsequently flourished through the 1980s and 1990s, and soon achieved an international following, thanks to retailers like Linda Dresner, who for a time had a Sander boutique on New York's Park Avenue, and Joan Burstein of Browns in London. In 1995, the Jil Sander group reported $114 million in sales. Prada In 1999, Prada Group bought a 75% share in her company. Sander remained creative designer and became chairwoman in the new joint venture. Six months later, in January 2000, Sander unexpectedly resigned abruptly as chairwoman and shortly thereafter as chief designer after confrontations with Prada's CEO, Patrizio Bertelli. Nearly all the design and production staff left after her departure. For 2001, the Jil Sander Group reported a net loss of $9.4 million, its first ever. The brand lost 26 million euros (about $30.4 million) in 2002 on flat sales, in part because of the costs of adding retail stores in London and in New York. Sander returned to the company as head designer and partner in a surprise decision in May 2003, after her noncompete clause had expired. Officially, Bertelli "approached Ms. Sander and began negotiating a truce". Bertelli had, with regard to Sander's departure in 2000, boldly stated before: "A brand as strong as Jil Sander doesn't need