MILAN — When Simone Bellotti started work at Jil Sander, he found himself confronted by an existential challenge. He worried about adding something to a brand which has always been about taking something away. He didn’t have this problem during his previous situation at Bally, where, in barely two years, he made his name with his strikingly idiosyncratic world-building. But it was easier there. When fashion thought of Bally, it thought of shoes. Jil Sander, on the other hand, comes weighted with preconceptions and clearly defined codes. “People have their own vision about this brand,” Bellotti said in a preview on the weekend. “It’s so strong, I think it expresses a feeling they connect with.” In other words, don’t mess with Jil.
And yet, in the show he presented on Wednesday morning, Bellotti offered such an immaculate reconceptualisation of Jil’s original vision that it landed with the same quiet force hers used to. It wasn’t only addition vs. subtraction that challenged Bellotti. Sander expressed her purification process with a paradoxically powerful subtlety. “It’s an approach which is less visible, especially on our devices today,” said Bellotti. “How can you appreciate the quality of a fabric, the hidden details? But I think it’s a plus to have the chance to do this today, because it means that whoever’s going to come to experience the collection, to touch it, will maybe feel it’s a privilege to have the chance to go deeper into these clothes. I hope it’s going to be like that.” It’s true. The key word there was “experience.” Maybe you had to be in the room to feel an irresistible papery lightness that will never translate in pictures.
Bellotti sees it as something multi-layered. “I’ve always said that I see a brand like a person. One day, you are serious and focused. The day after, you’re bored and you feel you need to escape. You want to have fun, lightness. Also, naïveté. These are all aspects of me, and, I’m sure, everyone. We are not just one way. I’m trying to represent these contradictions. Sometimes, it works better than others, but it depends on the ability to find the balance through experience. Maybe that’s what we all want to achieve. If I find the right balance, maybe in a few years, I will be super happy.”
He was on the right track with the revelation that struck him his first day at work. It was the day after Bellotti had left Bally and he’d been asked to speak to the team, which included people linked in from around the world, so he was understandably stressed. “I was in this huge room, pure white, modern, with this amazing light and these huge windows and as I started to talk, I was looking outside, and I saw the castle that’s there, huge because it’s so close. And I never had that point of view of this massive, austere castle, very masculine also. And I started to think about the relation between the two entities, Jil Sander and the Castello, and I felt that she decided to have the office here because of this contradiction.” By bringing the show back to its original location, the pristine space with the looming Castello, Bellotti instantly reanimated a dialogue between Jil’s perfect, protective tailoring and a pure, light-filled environment that embraced vulnerability and fragility. “Jil was showing sensuality, always in a very subtle, elegant way, like a deep V-neck showing the body. So I’m trying to work on this protecting and revealing. I see these as key elements of this brand.”
He captured the duality perfectly. On the weekend, he was talking about “removing fabric from the clothing, to create space, to create holes to give the body the freedom to come out.” In the show, tops were cropped, skirts and waistbands were slashed, armholes were deepened and coat dresses buttoned dangerously high on the leg. At the same time, there was a suggestion of articulation, like a knight’s armour rendered in knit.
The very essence of Jil Sander has always been its fabrics. Bellotti cut suits from summerweight crepe wools, and shift dresses from layers of incomprehensibly light Japanese polyester (the kind that holds fast to deep colours), and jackets from supernally buttery leathers. He said he was inspired by the pages of a book of embroideries and the translation of that idea into smoodgy layering felt like something that was very true to the essence of the brand.
Bellotti claimed he didn’t spend much time in the archive. “Because to be honest, we don’t have one.” Which, in this day and age, is a shock. “But my approach in this project is that I really started from the inside, from the office. It was very interesting to talk to people who’ve been here for 20 years or more and really learn from them. Another very important element of this show is studying and learning. They brought to me some very cool clothes to look at from very old collections. And they were telling me about her approach to work.” Bellotti also did his own research on Sander, reading everything that had been written about her. He was particularly taken by a conversation between her and her stylist Joe McKenna in System magazine. “I read in that interview that she was also paying a lot of attention to the music, to the right sound, the right light, because when you do clothes that look simple, it’s not minimalism, it’s searching for the perfection of the very fine.”
So the soundtrack was worth paying attention to, especially because it leans into Bellotti’s plans for the brand. The music was by Bochum Welt, who was born Gianluigi di Costanzo ten kilometers from Bellotti. They worked together on “Wanderlust,” a video project filmed in Hamburg which introduced Bellotti as Jil Sander’s new designer. “I didn’t want to even show clothes,” said Bellotti. “It was for me, the possibility to create content that was making sense for me. I decided to do it in Hamburg, because it was paying homage to the roots of this brand, for sure, but at the same time, I find Hamburg an amazing city with this kind of duality. I visited for the first time in 2018 and I was so excited because you can really see this. You have this very rich, bourgeois, neoclassic, super elegant vibe, but at the same time, there is this dark side. You can see it in the Wim Wenders movie ‘The American Friend,’ or in the photos Swedish photographer Anders Petersen took at Café Lehmitz in the ’60s. There’s always a B-side of everything, and that’s in the collection.”
True, the tug between cerebral and sensual was strong, just as it always was with Jil. Indeed, it was a key tension for all the designers who’ve been attached to her brand over the years. Bellotti marvelled at it. “The reputation of the brand is actually bigger than the brand. It means that everyone kept the level very high, which means that I’m even more scared. But that’s very interesting. The respect for the brand that every designer maintained in his own way … I never met someone saying, ‘I don’t like Jil Sander.’ So I hope that will not start now.”
After his debut on Wednesday, he has nothing to worry about.
It was a discipline for all the designers who’ve been attached to her brand over the years.