Jil Sander is back with “more skills and more experience”.

The iconic designer returned from fashion retirement at the age of 68 and recently showed her first menswear collection.

Jil Sander Men's SS2013 collection

The fashion creative explained her decision to make a comeback and added that the time away from her eponymous label has helped her to learn and find a new perspective.

“If you cut a painter’s hands off, he’d still feel the urge to pick up a brush,” she told The New York Times. “Now I have more skills and more experience and we’re in a different moment. Maybe it was good, maybe it was my destiny, that joint venture world and the time away.’’

Jil has overcome much controversy throughout her career, including her fallout with the Italian Prada group, who bought the majority of her company in 2000.

She left her own label in 2004 and collaborated with various firms, including Japanese brand Uniqlo.

Jil Sander Men's SS2013 collection

The German designer returned to Jil Sander earlier this year when she took over the reins from Raf Simons, now creative director at Christian Dior.

“It was such an intense learning process for me. I always wanted my design to bring value, and I started there just at the beginning of the biggest financial crisis in the world in 2008. So the idea was very interesting to bring good design to young people who cannot afford, let’s say, higher prices,” she said of her time at Uniqlo.

Now back at the helm of the company she founded over 40 years ago, Jil revealed that her focus “is the importance of the quality and of respecting heritage”.