The Tamesis
Today in Milan, Simone Bellotti will present his second collection as creative director of Jil Sander. He was in New York a few weeks ago, not to finalize the outfits—he said they were essentially locked in by then—but to introduce the brand’s new ad campaign with model Guinevere van Seenus. Van Seenus starred in Jil Sander campaigns shot by Craig McDean in the ’90s and opened Bellotti’s first show for the brand.
“This is a brand that you really need to research,” he tells Nicole Phelps on this Wednesday’s episode penetrate.
For fall, Bellotti’s mood board was organized around the idea of home—not a refuge, but something more ambivalent. He had been watching the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and exploring how the director used interior decoration to create tension and unease, making the familiar feel threatening. He also changed the way he designed new collections: his first show was about subtraction, while this one was about addition. “I like the idea of ambivalence,” he said.
Jil Sander once described the atmosphere of her work as “a glass of clear water” or “a glass of red wine”. When asked to describe the mood of his own fall collection, Belotti didn’t miss a beat: It’s the olive in the martini. “This extra thing is obviously superfluous,” he says, “but it makes the cocktail perfect.” Listen to the entire conversation above.
