| Simone Bellotti presented his third Jil Sander collection, Spring 2027, in Milan this week. The show centered on deliberate imperfection: pinched waistlines, high button stances, and asymmetrical seams. Bellotti’s first two seasons (Spring 2026, Fall 2026) had emphasized rigor and architectural precision. Spring 2027 marks his first departure from that established style. Backstage, he repeatedly cited “vulnerability” as his guiding concept. |
How does a brand built on discipline find its most talked-about season by loosening its grip? At Jil Sander’s Spring 2027 show this week, Simone Bellotti answered that question with an empty mood board -no images or clippings – and the scent of Santa Maria Novella potpourri filling the room. Backstage, he kept returning to one word: vulnerability. On Wednesday morning, Bellotti walked backstage at Jil Sander with the empty mood board. There were no images or clippings pinned to the tall white panel that usually anchors a designer’s thinking before a show. Instead, the room was filled with the scent of Santa Maria Novella potpourri and a single idea that Bellotti kept returning to in conversation: vulnerability.
For his third collection at the Milan house, Bellotti set out to loosen the armor that has defined Jil Sander’s reputation since its founding. “The uniform is always associated with toughness, strength, and power,” he said backstage. You could see him working against that assumption in nearly every jacket that passed. Trim, single-breasted blazers had their button stance pushed upward, close to the throat. This gave the wearer a slightly withdrawn, private posture. Looser double-breasted coats followed the same logic, with buttons high near the Adam’s apple. This caused the fronts to hang open and swing loose, occasionally twisting like a scarf caught in the wind.
Bellotti has plainly stated that minimalism, on its own, no longer holds much currency. So many labels use clean lines and quiet palettes that the look has become background noise rather than a statement. His response was to introduce friction. He gathered and pinched waistlines on coats and jackets in ways that appeared slightly off and almost accidental. He did not pretend otherwise. “It’s not easy for everyone. But we have other solutions,” he said with a smile. He noted that the showroom would carry gentler, more wearable versions of the same idea.
That admission mattered. Fashion designers rarely acknowledge when a garment is difficult to wear, so Bellotti’s candor gave the collection an unusual honesty. The puckering and asymmetry were not universally flattering, and he was aware of that from the beginning.
Despite the disruption, the show never strayed from what Bellotti called “a very classic feeling.” Tailored jackets, structured coats, dress trousers, and pencil skirts formed the collection’s backbone. “Jil was always an alternative to that, looking classic but a little twisted,” he said. That twist was most evident midway through the lineup, where jackets hugged the torso and blazers had a built-in rumple, as though their wearers had been caught in a windstorm or had just gotten out of bed.
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Color choices leaned toward pale, soothing tones, and light fabrics gave the awkwardness a warmth it might otherwise have lacked. The overall effect made Jil Sander, a house long associated with buttoned-up restraint, feel more approachable and, at times, tender. Coverateur’s review of the show called it a lesson in subverting minimalism rather than simply repeating it, and that interpretation is evident in what appeared on the runway.
What sets this collection apart isn’t the tailoring trick itself, but the timing. Bellotti’s first two seasons at Jil Sander – Spring 2026 and Fall 2026 – both leaned into rigor with architectural shoulders, sharp cinching, and a “back to purism” narrative that critics tied explicitly to the Raf Simons years. Spring 2027 marks the first time Bellotti has deliberately broken his established style rather than refined it. This is a different kind of statement than a debut collection finding its footing. It’s a designer with two successful seasons behind him who has chosen to introduce visible imperfection into a house whose entire commercial identity has been built on precision. The puckered waistlines and asymmetrical seams aren’t a stylistic detour; they’re a bet that Jil Sander’s audience is sophisticated enough to recognize that “flawed on purpose” is more valuable than flawless.
Bellotti had spent most of his career designing menswear before arriving at Jil Sander. This season, he delved deeper into womenswear. Slim dresses with bubble hems had built-in capes that puffed outward like parachutes as models walked through the narrow rows of benches at the brand’s Milan headquarters. A pale yellow dress draped and wrapped like a taut bedsheet offered the collection’s most expansive volume. Elsewhere, a pencil skirt printed with a Japanese landscape was the only print in the lineup. It was understated next to the sculptural tailoring around it.
The shoes had their own subtle oddness, with asymmetrical vamps and cutouts arcing over the toes, extending the theme of controlled imperfection to the very end.
Bellotti, for his part, takes no such risks personally. When asked what he wears day to day, he always answers the same: blue jeans, every season, regardless of what happens on the runway.
