Simone Bellotti Makes His First Move at Jil Sander

Simone Bellotti isn’t spilling secrets ahead of his Jil Sander debut at Milan Fashion Week this September—but he is setting the mood. In a video, shared exclusively with Vogue, the new creative director reveals his taste for lyrical restraint and a serious obsession with sound. Not the mainstream kind. Bellotti vibes on the deep frequency of aural techno—immersive, atmospheric sound textures pulsing with an intense undercurrent.

At a meeting in Jil Sander’s minimalist Milan headquarters, Bellotti radiated his trademark composure. “There’s so much to study about this brand,” he admitted, but if he felt the weight of its formidable legacy, he wore it as lightly as a vintage Jil Sander coat. The significance of the heritage seems more context than burden for him. And no pandering homage to the archives for his inaugural move: instead, a deliberately left-field, off-script music project, a nod to both his personal fascinations and his refusal to play by anyone else’s score. The sole hint to the brand’s heritage is that the video was shot in Hamburg, the German town on the Baltic Sea from which Heidemarie Jiline ‘Jil’ Sander launched her label in 1968.

“Hamburg is a wonderful city, full of contrasts,” remarked Bellotti, reflecting on Sander’s home with a sense of both admiration and intent. It’s a place where old-world elegance meets austerity, and bourgeois classicism coexists with industrial grit. This interplay of rigor and sensuality, energy and composure is more than a backdrop; it’s a living embodiment of the brand’s ethos. The architecture, the light, the atmosphere: all speak in the same pure, reduced language the label has cultivated over decades. For Bellotti, these qualities aren’t just coincidental, they are foundational.

Courtesy of Jil Sander

Courtesy of Jil Sander

Courtesy of Jil Sander

Courtesy of Jil Sander

The melodic electronica that scores the new video is the work of Bochum Welt, the stage name of Italian composer Gianluigi Di Costanzo, whose alias sounds strikingly Teutonic for someone hailing from Milan. The name itself is a fusion of Welt, the German word for both “world,” and a high-powered astral telescope, capturing both the cerebral and the celestial in a single moniker. Di Costanzo has released singles under Aphex Twins’ Rephlex label, and has collaborated with Thomas Dolby’s Headspace and Beatnik Inc. The unreleased track featured in the Jil Sander video will soon surface on a limited-edition vinyl EP produced by the brand, which will be distributed through the label’s boutiques, and more broadly through traditional music distributors.

The initiative is more than a stylish footnote; it marks the beginning of a long-term cultural project envisioned by Bellotti, who sees music not as an accessory, but as a vital language marking his tenure at the brand. Since music happens to be one of his personal passions, it’s fair to expect future collaborations to reflect the same hallmarks he plans to bring to Jil Sander: authenticity, emotional depth, and an elegant sense of duality. In other words, don’t be surprised if the brand’s minimalist aesthetic begins to hum with unexpected frequencies, ones that echo Bellotti’s own soundtrack of obsessions and curiosities. When a fashion house listens closely to its creative director’s heartbeat, the outcome is rarely just noise.

“Jil Sander has a definite style—that’s why it’s still so loved, admired, and respected,” said Bellotti when asked about the brand’s place in today’s crowded, hyper-competitive fashion Welt. With many labels pivoting toward stylish wearability to grab attention, and just as many copycats scrambling for a slice of the market, how does a brand that practically wrote the blueprint for chic minimalism stay relevant? Bellotti revealed little about how his vision will unfold, but he acknowledged an affinity for a sensibility leaning toward restraint—a surprising admission, perhaps, given his 14-year tenure at Gucci under the maximalist reigns of Frida Giannini and Alessandro Michele. Yet his conceptual and artistic bedrocks were actually laid elsewhere, and his telescope points towards the North.

Courtesy of Jil Sander

Courtesy of Jil Sander

Courtesy of Jil Sander

Courtesy of Jil Sander

Courtesy of Jil Sander

Bellotti began his fashion journey in Antwerp, where he interned at A.F. Vandevorst. “I liked everything about that aesthetic,” he recalls. “While everyone else was heading to London, for me it was Antwerp, no hesitation, back in 2001.” Returning to Milan, he sought out experiences that would sharpen his architectural eye: first with the avant-garde, ultra-niche Austrian designer Carol Christian Poell—“an absolute genius, radical, extreme in his existential tailoring”—and then with Gianfranco Ferré, famously dubbed the architect of fashion for his sculptural precision. All of which is to say: Bellotti is a designer who values strong, clear foundations. And that, in itself, is a kind of symmetry with the spirit of Jil Sander, an intelligent house built on purity and conviction, designed by a woman of elegant, intense allure.

Yet there’s an unmistakable emotional undercurrent to Bellotti’s design approach, something his tenure at Bally made abundantly clear. There, he didn’t just revive a heritage Swiss brand with scant fashion credibility; he imbued it with a kind of esoteric naturalism, a magic realism drawn from obscure, fascinating Swiss traditions. The result was an unexpected blend of rationality and oddity, where precision of design met narrative finesse, and modernity brushed up against folklore.

Courtesy of Jil Sander

Courtesy of Jil Sander

Courtesy of Jil Sander

“Jil Sander is a brand with a soul,” Bellotti reflects. “It’s a complex house, one that holds within it extreme classicism, something very modern, and a kind of weightless lightness.” He speaks with reverence for the brand’s emphasis on research and quality, especially the kind of meticulous experimentation that isn’t immediately visible: hidden details, textures that appear heavy but reveal themselves to be featherlight, illusions built on precision.

“It’s a brand that has lived a long life,” Bellotti mused in his characteristically hushed, almost oracular tone. “And every designer who’s passed through its doors has helped uphold its high reputation.” Where Bellotti will take it next, and which corners of the fashion Welt he’ll explore, remains to be seen. But one suspects he won’t tread the obvious path.