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

Today in Milan, Jil Sander Creative Director Simone Bellotti will show his second collection. Two weeks out from the show he was in New York – not to finalize the collection, which he says was largely locked a month ago, but to introduce the brand's new campaign alongside model Guinevere van Seenus. Van Seenus opened Bellotti's debut show and was the star of the Craig McDean campaigns that defined Jil Sander in the nineties. He’s looking back on those days as he prepares for the new collection. “It’s a brand that you really have to study,” he told Nicole Phelps. For fall, Bellotti’s mood board is organized around the idea of home—not as sanctuary, but as something more ambivalent. He's been watching Rainer Werner Fassbinder films and exploring the way the director used interiors to create tension and unease, to make the familiar feel threatening. He’s also shifting his approach for the new collection: where his first show was about reduction, this one is about addition. “I love this idea of contradiction,” he said. Jil Sander once described the mood of her collections like a “clear glass of water” or a “glass of red wine.” When asked to describe the mood of his fall collection: Bellotti didn't miss a beat: it's the olive in a martini. “It’s this extra thing that is apparently superfluous,” he said, “But it makes the cocktail perfect.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices