Simone Bellotti On His New Jil Sander Collection and Lifelong Shoe Obsession

0:00Nicole Phelps:I'm Chloe Mel, and I am so excited to tell you all about the spring issue of Vogue, my first as head of editorial content. It is full of so many examples of what Vogue does best. There is a spectacularly romantic cover shoot with Rosalia, a beautiful and moving remembrance of Valentino Garavani by Hamish Bowles, the quest for the perfect pillow with a beautiful oil painting illustration inspired by the Simone Rocha runway show, a tribute to Shoes That Pack a Punch, starring some of our favorite staff doges. It's an issue I'm so proud of. I'm so excited for everyone to see it and to touch it and hold it and keep it.

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0:56Guinevere van Seenus:This is The Run-Through. I'm Nicole Feltz. Today, I'm joined by Simone Bellotti, the creative director of Jill Sander and a very talented designer. He just showed his second collection for the label Today in Milan following a very strong debut back in September. He joined us in New York a couple of weeks before the show to tell us about the new collection, why 90s fashion is still such a cultural touchpoint today, and his lifelong obsession with shoes. Ciao, Simone. It's great to see you here in New York.

1:26Simone Bellotti:Thank you. Thank you for having me here. It's like a big honor to be here with you.

1:33Guinevere van Seenus:Well, thank you. You are two weeks away from your second show for Jill Sander. And so you have to tell us why are you actually in New York at this crucial time in the development of your new season?

1:48Simone Bellotti:Yeah. Luckily, we almost finalized everything a month ago, more or less. I came here, first of all, because we just went out with a new campaign. And so we wanted to introduce this new project. We had a very nice talk yesterday at the Marion Goodman Gallery. I was with the legendary Guinevere Vincennes. That was part of the first show. She opened the show. And I thought it was a very good... She's not in the campaign, but I think it was good to have this exchange with her because she is really part of the DNA of the brand.

2:44Guinevere van Seenus:So Guinevere, for people who don't know, is a model who modeled for Jill Sander in the 90s, correct?

2:49Simone Bellotti:Yes, yes. And she was the face of the iconic campaign shot by Craig McDean that are so inspiring still today for everyone and for me, of course. And it's interesting to hear her point of view. And yesterday she was saying that she starts in a very naive way. everything was very she she mentioned and she said naivete and and it was good that interesting to to hear that something that became so visually relevant started in probably was not even planned you know and it's interesting though because when i think about those images naivete

3:42Guinevere van Seenus:is not what comes to mind. I think of confidence, sophistication, and a strong woman. And so what words do you associate with Jill Sander at the moment?

3:57Simone Bellotti:What I'm trying to do in this brand is like studying the brand. that was also one of the most important content in the first show, like trying to express my feeling about what I want to learn from this brand. Because first of all, it's very different from my previous experience. and so it's a brand that you really have to study, understand. I was lucky that I met, I'm lucky that I met in the office some people that are in the company since many, many years. They had the chance to work with G. Sander herself and all the other creative directors including Raph Simons and so I really listened to them and I learned I was very curious to learn about the way of working even if it was a very different time compared to now it was for sure much slower and so I'm trying to keep and learn to work in this way to concentrate on dedicate time to something that can be seen as a small detail, but in the end, it's really part of the DNA of the brand.

5:39Simone Bellotti:And so focus on something that is less visible is what really interests me a lot. And then, yeah, I always say, you know, some collections are made to be great on the phone and some collections they can be great when you experience in real life. And that was the, I was very happy about the result of the first show because many people who came to the show and then they came back to see the collection in the showroom. They really appreciate the attention that we put and the amount of work that we did to create something that apparently looks simple, but it's not.

6:29Guinevere van Seenus:Give us an example of one of those things.

6:32Simone Bellotti:Yeah, one example for sure. Let's talk about Guinevere, the first look. It looks very simple. It's like a very short sweater and a white skirt. So you don't get it immediately if you look at the phone. But then when you see it, you see that behind this apparently simple white skirt, there is a very special construction. And there are many ideas behind this construction. one of the references in the show was these works of Richard Prince

7:14Guinevere van Seenus:The Hoods and

7:20Simone Bellotti:the idea behind The Hoods was how can I create a kind of a protection a kind of armor and behind the idea of the armor was this idea of the Castello Sforcesco which is just in front of us, which I think it's really part of the dialogue between the modernity of the brand and the classicism of the brand. This is what I like to think. I like to think that that office is not there for a random reason. There is this dialogue, which I love. If it's true or not, I don't know.

7:59Guinevere van Seenus:It's true. You might be true.

8:01Simone Bellotti:Yeah, exactly.

8:02Guinevere van Seenus:So you mentioned Richard Prince's car hoods as a reference for your first collection.

8:08Simone Bellotti:Yeah, that was an industrial, let's say an industrial armor, you know, with this angle and corner. So I said, what can be more modern than a medieval armor? So I said, maybe a hood for a car. And so the skirt was cut in a way and there was an inner construction that create all these angles. It's a lot of work for something that is not immediately visible.

8:35Guinevere van Seenus:It's quite subtle. Yes.

8:36Simone Bellotti:And I love this, to have the opportunity to go and explore more about this.

8:43Guinevere van Seenus:So tell us something that's on your mood board for fall 2026.

8:49Simone Bellotti:Yeah. The idea is like at the moment still very articulated. But I can say I start on a reflection about home and home or a house and how do we feel about in relation to a house. and I started to think about a house as a place where you feel comfortable and it's a place where you want to stay, where you want to feel good but sometimes a house can be something that you want to live and you want to explore something else outside And I put in relation this idea of this house with the idea of respecting the code of a house or do something that goes far from these codes. So the initial thoughts was about this idea.

10:14Simone Bellotti:A visual reference was some images from some Fassbinder movies. He used to pay attention, a lot of attention to the interiors. and the house, the interiors in his movies were like spaces where you felt fear and strong emotion. So a house was seen, was useful to represent this idea of like not being so comfortable in the place where you live.

10:58Guinevere van Seenus:which Fassbender movie should I watch to prepare for your show

11:02Simone Bellotti:I watched which is a very weird story third generation I don't know that one and Maria Brown wedding I thought they were visually quite exciting and yeah visually the colors the use of the carpets and the atmosphere. It really makes you feel this tension. And it's very, very interesting.

11:42Guinevere van Seenus:More with Simone Belotti after the break.

11:53Nicole Phelps:In a time when the United States military is being sent into American cities, when civilians and soldiers are being pitted against each other, it's strange that we've never dressed more alike. We all wear performance clothes. We all wear outdoor clothes. Whether or not we're outside, civilians and soldiers. I'm Avery Truffleman. I make a podcast about clothing called Articles of Interest. And in this new season, I trace the interwoven histories of the military and the outdoor industry and how they built each other. Find Articles of Interest wherever you get your podcasts. And the season is called Gear.

12:33Guinevere van Seenus:Let's go back to Bali for a moment because you were not there for very long, but very quickly you developed a following. And when you look back at that moment and you ask yourself, wow, how did I do that? How did you do that? And what would the lessons be from Bali that you think you're taking to Jill Sander? What I would like to take and keep with me is this idea which is very important to have fun. and

13:11Simone Bellotti:the difference is that Gilles Sander of course is a very different brand from Bali, Bali is a shoemaker and Gilles Sander has quite a following big following for his Redditor and it has a specific code then everyone has his interpretation of of these codes everyone what I like is that everyone has his own idea about what is Gillesander or not which makes the things even more complicated but and what I like about Gillesander is that really to me was one of a few brands that really influenced so many of us, many designers, many other brands. Basically, they create a new vision in that moment of the 90s that is still modern today.

14:24So I feel a very big responsibility to try to do an interpretation

14:35Simone Bellotti:of what can be just under today. What I tried to put and to try to express was this idea of this sensuality that I find very strong in the DNA of the brand. That was always very subtle, very sophisticated. So, for example, in the campaign, it was very interesting to try to create this sense of proximity between the characters that were in the pictures. I was trying to create this sense of, to let them be close to each other and through the body. And, yeah, so this is what I would like to keep going and go deeper in this research of mixing these beautiful sartorial tailorings and beautiful cuts together with a sense of, in a way, humanity.

15:56Guinevere van Seenus:What you're saying is really resonating with me because I'm thinking back to the 90s and what my vision of Jill Sander was, was taking the escalator at Barney's, I think up to the third floor. And at the top of the escalator, you saw the wall of dark suits. And, you know, from a distance, it could have been all the same suit. But, of course, you went up close and that's when the subtleties were revealed. I want to ask you one question about the 90s because this is such a fascinating thing to me, how the 90s just live on and on. You know, right now we are days away here in the U.S. from Ryan Murphy's new show about JFK Jr.

16:37Guinevere van Seenus:and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. So it has sparked a whole new round of talk about their 90s style. Why do you think as a designer, fashion and sort of the culture at large keeps going back to that decade?

16:51Simone Bellotti:I think probably because that was the last moment in fashion, I would say until the beginning of 2000, where the different houses had very different personalities. It was very different, the products that everyone was making. and so I think it's still strong in our mind and it's still and it's very interesting even for someone which is very younger because you can really feel that every brand had a very strong personality with their own specific products for We were very different clients. And this was, I think, what makes that moment very strong. In a way, unicity of every brand that was more recognizable and there was less communication.

18:05Simone Bellotti:We were not like, how do you say?

18:10Guinevere van Seenus:Bombarded with images.

18:11Simone Bellotti:Exactly. And probably the fact that we had less images, those few images became so iconic because you don't have the chance to look at hundreds of these. It was just that image. When you look at the Craig McDean campaign, I mean, it's so unique and you don't have 300 versions of that. And so probably is this idea, let's say, you know, of scarcity that makes something stronger, I think.

18:48Guinevere van Seenus:Can we adopt? Can we go back to that? Like, is there a way to make scarcity work in 2026, do you think? Yes, yes.

18:59Simone Bellotti:I mean, I think scarcity makes you dream. It's when you don't have something at every corner in front of you that makes you desire something. is when you don't know something that you are curious to discover. So probably we just maybe need to reduce a little bit or filter more what we want to know. It seems that we know everything today, but it's in a very superficial way. So we must probably start to be more selective in this and not to have this fear of not knowing something. Sometimes not knowing something is good because it makes you, in this way, back to this naivete, it's good that when you don't know something and it's always like a chance to discover something new.