Simone Bellotti brings Jil Sander back to Hamburg. But how does the new creative director get started with Jil Sander and what does he reveal about his future orientation of the brand?
Bellotti gave a first insight into his vision before his official catwalk debut as creative director of Jil Sander. Instead of relying on a fashionable bang, the Italian fashion designer chose an atmospheric video called “Wanderlust” that came into focus.
Bellotti thus paid homage to the place of origin of the label and returned to the place where Heidemarie Jiline “Jil” Sander opened her first boutique in 1968. The fact that Bellotti chose Hamburg of all places and Milan, at least for the time being, turns his back on it seems more than just a symbolic gesture. It looks like a programmatic indication of how seriously he takes the DNA of the house. In an industry in which creative change of leadership is often accompanied with a large staging pathos, this entry appears almost slowed down but by no means weak. On the contrary, the video looks like a quiet start with the potential for Langen Nachhall.
A preview without fashion
For his first preview of his vision for Jil Sander, Bellotti not only chose Milan, but also largely against fashion in the classic sense. Clothing moved into the background of a vision, which rather defined itself through music and atmosphere. The video is accompanied by a previously unpublished track by the Italian composer Bochum Welt, bourgeois Gianluigi di Costanzo, an artist with a German -looking alias, whose music is changing between technoid melancholy and intellectual electronica.
This choice hardly seems by chance. Rather, it suggests that this area of tension – Germany and Italy, intellectualism and nostalgia – could also shape Bellotti’s own manuscript.
Like the brand itself, the chosen music also seems intellectually, minimalist and under tones – properties that correspond to both the architecture of Hamburg and the puristic approach of Jil Sander.
The titles of the vinyl-EP specially produced for this project-available from August in Jil-Sander-Stores-also tell of inner tensions and contrasts: Crystal ICE, Wanderlust, Shades, Night’s Frost, San Peder A Sent, More Light (Escape Mix) and Cresting Waves work like sound games over the day and night, standstill, standstill and movement, urbanity, Nature. Topics that could also shape Bellotti’s debut collection.
The video itself also looks reduced, but rich in symbolism. Bellotti, who previously worked at Bally and went through formative stations at Carol Christian Poell and Gianfranco Ferré, uses the return to Hamburg as more than just a historical reference. It signals a possible return to the source, not only geographically, but ideological.
Jil Sander always stood for a special form of strict: the intellect of the Bauhaus, the reluctance of German minimalism and the sensuality of androgyny and for Bellotti this formula seems to be less a relic than a blueprint that needs to be developed.
Another creative change in Jil Sander
What should benefit him is his experience in dealing with traditional brands. In the Swiss label Bally, founded in 1851, which he most recently led as a creative director, he found subtle ways to incorporate Swiss folklore – from small cow bells to the legend of the Engadine seasid women – without losing the brand known for their leather crafts or losing his own handwriting.
His talent to embed personal narratives into the strictest brand architecture could also benefit him to Jil Sander. Because the challenge that Bellotti now faces lies in balance between respecting the inheritance and the development of its own manuscript. Jil Sander is familiar with such creative transitions.
Since the first withdrawal of the founder in 2000, the house has several owners: interior change and designer: experienced inside: from the Italian luxury group Prada to the fashion conglomerate OTB, from the intellectual elegance of Raf Simons’ to the well -thought -out craftsmanship of Luke and Lucie Meier.
Now it is up to Bellotti to deal with the deep roots of the brand in German design ideals. His first collection in September will show where his design journey will lead him – but in Hamburg a lot has already been pointed to the beginning of a new chapter. One without a radical break, but as a respectful further development.