September 25, 2025 |
There was something quietly electric in the air at Jil Sander’s Milan HQ – or maybe that was just Simone Bellotti’s debut, a colour-coded SS26 collection murmuring down the runway. With Luke and Lucie Meier’s exit behind him, Bellotti didn’t come in with fireworks, but with a surgeon’s precision and a child’s curiosity. The stark white hall, pierced only by a black runway arc, felt like his blank page.
He leaned into colour – not in reckless splashes, but in clever punctuation: a collar edge of neon, a berry-pink shell under translucent mesh, an avocado trench echoing a whisper of sage. Layers felt studied, never cluttered – georgette strips fluttered, mesh panels offered glimpses of the body and checked fabrics, subtly reworked, nodded to classical dressing. Tailoring stayed sharp: high-buttoned jackets, crisp trousers, but always disturbed just so – a folded hem, an off-centre seam, a peekaboo slit.
Accessories did the talking too. The new Pivot bag, square-toed lace-ups, cut-out ballerinas – these underscored looks. If Bellotti’s mission was to ask questions, both minimalism and maximalism went with him for the ride. And in that curious tension, Jil Sander reemerged with a refreshed vision.
Photography courtesy of Jil Sander.
