This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free.
After Saturday’s Bally show, a handful of editors hustled out of Milan’s landmark Torre Velasca skyscraper and informed their drivers that there was a change of plans: To the Bally store, and step on it!
Few runway shows inspire urgent retail missions; most this Milan Fashion Week have elicited shrugs. But there was a fizziness in the room at the Bally outing by creative director Simone Bellotti, whose designs, off-kilter in all the right ways, contain a strong sense of immediacy.
Take, for example, a four-button blazer that curves around the body in a seductive caress, its gently sloping arms shaped by pressing the jacket’s spongy crepe wool, as Bellotti explained in a preview the day before in his office. “Normally it’s a women’s fabric, but I really love it because it keeps the shape very, very well,” he said. Or consider a charcoal sweater that was elongated until it hugged the model’s thighs, which appeared so natural that I hardly clocked it until reviewing the images afterward—I was too busy eyeing the hiking boots adorned with bright metal studs on the models’ feet. Or look at any of the leather jackets that hit the runway 16 floors up in the Modernist tower, all of which fit perfectly imperfectly.
At the preview on Friday, the 46-year-old designer—in his role only since 2023—was measured and matter-of-fact about how he makes garments that don’t feel trendy, but that a growing audience clearly wants to wear right now. “I am not trying to figure out what can be,” he said. “What I like is just trying to make good clothes with a point of view and a message.”
Bellotti’s approach has hit especially hard with fashion insiders aching for a break from brands chasing seasonal style crazes. At the intimate, 100-some person show, you could spot the Bally “Plume” loafer—a sleek cross between a moccasin and a boat shoe—up and down the first and second rows. “I think those who work in this world see in Simone everything that should be in a designer today: great experience, great taste, and the ability to understand what people want to wear today,” says GQ Italia style editor Francesco Martino, who has had a front row seat to Milan’s Bellotti-saince. Martino usually wears gargantuan sneakers from his elite Balenciaga collection, but when I saw him earlier this week he was getting street-styled in well-broken-in Plumes. “I’m almost ready for my second pair,” he told me.
Bellotti lightly blushed when I asked him how he felt about his vision taking hold with such tough customers. “I think it’s amazing,” he said. The post-show shopping sprees were further encouraged by the persistent rumors circling Milan Fashion Week of an imminent Bellotti move to Jil Sander, which on Wednesday parted ways with co-creative directors Luke and Lucie Meier. (When I asked Bellotti about the speculation, he chuckled softly. “Let’s see, let’s see,” he said.)
