Simone Bellotti

Simone Bellotti is an Italian designer whose career developed through European luxury design studios before moving into public house leadership. He worked at A.F. Vandevorst, Gianfranco Ferré, Bottega Veneta and Dolce & Gabbana, then spent about sixteen years at Gucci in menswear roles under the creative periods of Frida Giannini and Alessandro Michele.

Bellotti joined Bally in October 2022 and became design director in May 2023, leading four runway seasons from Spring/Summer 2024 through Fall/Winter 2025. That work made footwear, leather, bourgeois dress and subcultural styling part of a restrained but increasingly recognisable vocabulary.

Jil Sander appointed him creative director on 10 March 2025. He opened the tenure with the music project Wanderlust, followed by his Spring/Summer 2026 runway debut at the house’s Piazza Castello headquarters and a Fall/Winter 2026 collection that moved from reduction towards denser layering and surface.

Bellotti approaches an archive through mood, casting and product as much as direct quotation. At Bally and Jil Sander, familiar codes are displaced slightly: refined leather sits against raw edges, strict tailoring is loosened by exposure of the body, and conventional bourgeois forms acquire a quieter subcultural tension.

His method depends on contrast without visual overload. Structure and lightness, concealment and revelation, restraint and awkwardness are held inside exact silhouettes, with footwear and leather goods treated as central propositions rather than supporting categories.

Image-making is part of the design system. Music, recurring collaborators and historically resonant casting connect runway, campaign and cultural project while keeping individual credits attached to specific outputs.