Show review in a sentence: Simone Bellotti’s debut at Jil Sander married restraint with play, proving less can most definitely be more.
Designer: Simone Bellotti
Location: Jil Sander Headquarters, Milan
It’s a new era for Jil Sander. A staple at Milan Fashion Week and a quieter, cult-favourite affair, it’s one of the many brands that have experienced a shake-up. This time at the helm is Simone Bellotti of Bally fame, known for popularising the much-loved boat shoe. The Italian designer brings with him a wealth of experience from Gucci and from working under visionaries such as Alessandro Michele and Frida Giannini. The mission was to understand this brand’s particular Germanness. It’s one of the debuts the fashion set has been most excited about, after all, with every creative director at Jil Sander has represented a small but marked shift.
In the headquarters of Jil Sander—a quiet three-storey building in Milan—the brand hosted its first show since 2017. And as we approach ideas of what is too much and what is too little, especially within fashion, Bellotti questioned notions of adding, subtracting, leaving as is, or layering. The final conclusion was one of opposing forces, which came through beautifully in the collection—as Jil Sander puts it: “strictness and lightness, grace and severity, control and freedom”.
Bellotti looked to Hamburg to draw cues from a classic and very minimal Jil Sander. And experiment he did, with austere shapes in clean, classic silhouettes, cut-outs at the front and around the bust, and—perhaps my favourite—new ideas on how to wear colour: the trim of the socks, the electric pop of the collar. There was a considered play on textures and fabrics: light panels of georgette that looked like paper; shiny techno fabrics that gave the collection a futuristic touch without overpowering it; sequins and sumptuous leathers that were decadent but not overwhelming.
It was Bellotti’s shoes, however, that stole the show: lace-up shoes with square toes, brogues with a small heel, ballerina flats and sandals. One thing’s for certain—in his version of Jil Sander, we foresee a bevy of cult and collector favourites, and the brand we’ve come to know and love is in safe, steady hands.
1 / 10
Look 2
2 / 10
Look 9
3 / 10
Look 13
4 / 10
Look 28
5 / 10
Look 35
6 / 10
Look 41
7 / 10
Look 44
8 / 10
Look 49
9 / 10
Look 50
10 / 10
