It was announced today that Simone Bellotti, who in four seasons as Bally creative director transformed it into a cooler-than-cool IYKYK brand, will be taking the top spot vacated by Lucie and Luke Meier at Jil Sander, effective immediately. It’s always a momentous occasion when a talented designer gets a job with a label that will allow them to expand their creativity in different ways, but it’s also a little bittersweet and sad because it was so exciting to see him rise through the ranks of the industry based solely on the power of his insanely cool clothes alone (kind of like when your favorite indie band signs to a major label). In Bellotti’s tenure there were no influencers or brand ambassadors, and possibly only one red carpet appearance—Saoirse Ronan’s while she did Blitz promo, styled by Danielle Goldberg.
The feeling of walking into a show—or opening a link in a new tab as was my case—and seeing something so out-of-the-blue good, is so rare it’s like a treasure. Bellotti quietly ascended to the role of creative director after Bally parted ways with a much-hyped designer, making his debut for the spring 2024 season. The first sign that something was afoot was the black pencil skirt on look 2. It sat extra-high on one side of the waist, and had a kind of asymmetrical fishtail hem that almost touched the floor. Upon closer inspection, it was a faux wrap-skirt, as in, here’s a long fabric panel wrapped around the body and “secured” in place. Tucked into the skirt was a very run-of-the mill short sleeve button down-shirt in that almost generic shade of powder blue and the model was wearing sturdy oxfords. A cursory glance hinted at straightforward uniform-like clothes, but I soon realized the devil really was in the details: a three-button jacket cut boxy—just in the body—so it had the feeling of pure geometry, a gray quasi-boatneck sweater layered over another blue button down shirt, car coats worn somewhat awkwardly with shorts. Everything had an ineffable sense of cool. You didn’t quite know why it looked so appealing, it simply was.
I immediately Googled Bellotti and was surprised and dare I even say delighted to find… absolutely nothing. Just my own article from a few months before when they had announced his post. I re-learn the facts. He’s 45. He was at Gucci for the last 16 years and before that he’d spent time at Dolce Gabbana, Bottega Veneta, and Gianfranco Ferré. Nothing in that resumé seemed to explain what I’d just seen on the runway and so in a sense, he remained an enigma. It made everything even better.
In the subsequent seasons, I was delighted to find that Bellotti’s talent was leaning into the stranger tendencies, skewing his uniform wear by one or two degrees in unexpected places. A chocolate brown sweater vest had an inexplicable shearling panel in the back—only barely perceptible in the runway photos—while a simple long sleeve wool dress had been pinned at the waist with an extra-large safety pin to expose a shearling skirt underneath. It was the sensuality of the latter which really stood out to me, very coy but powerful. Nothing screamed at your face, Look at me, I’m so different! but if you took a minute to look—really look—something new emerged, like those 3D posters from the 1980s.
By then, everyone was talking about Bellotti and “how good the new Bally was.” Through a few profiles in this and other magazines, I learned he had worked with Carol Christian Poell and A.F. Vandevorst and these two things did indeed click with his vision of classic clothes with just enough push and pull to make them extraordinary. Spring 2025 expanded beyond the uniform dressing with very 1980s floral print dresses with exaggerated seashell-esque wobbly peplums, their padding visible like a mattress cross section. Men and women often wore the exact same pieces, not as a statement on “genderless” clothing, which usually involves sweatsuits, but rather a confident sales pitch. “These clothes are so good that everyone obviously wants to wear them,” they seemed to say. Every collection built upon the previous one in a way that was a genuine thrill to observe.
The Bally fall 2025 show was one of the buzziest (no small feat in a season that also included debuts from Julien Klausner at Dries Van Noten, Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford, and Sarah Burton at Givenchy) in part because it had been rumored that it would be Bellotti’s last. It turned out to be his weirdest—and sexiest yet. The wobbly peplums became more geometric and traded places with shearling that emerged like a sensual monster on the back of a gray long sleeve shift dress, or the front of a long skirt with a center slim cut to there. Even the makeup, inspired by a ’70s photo of the artist Luciano Castelli, with black lines surrounding the eyes trailed by silver blueish eyeshadow seemed to be an elaborate dare to the audience—‘I know he’s not actually proposing we try it out, but a part of me feels the pull of its allure... why not just give it a shot? And that gets at the core of what makes Bellotti so special: his clothes are grounded in reality but he still gives you the chance—if ever fleeting—to imagine a fantasy version of yourself.
