Simone Bellotti is the new design director at Bally, replacing the short-term role of Rhuigi Villaseñor, who left in May. An experienced designer, Bellotti spent 16 years at Gucci under Frida Giannini and Alessandro Michele, and is now tasked with taking the Swiss brand into new and potentially solid territory.
For his first collection, he has drawn on the label’s rich archive “which contains incredible treasures of craftsmanship from Switzerland,” he said backstage before today’s show, which was held in the portico surrounding the formal gardens of the cloister of San Simpliciano. A sense of precision and rigorous execution are inherent to the Swiss mentality. But as the saying goes, still waters run deep. Bellotti was drawn to exploring a mysterious, expressive and subversive underside of the spirit of the country’s culture. He came across the story of Monte Verità, a utopian community of free, creative souls founded in Ascona at the turn of the 20th century. It was a retreat for spiritual regeneration and artistic and mystical practices and was visited by famous intellectuals and artists – Carl Jung, Herman Hesse, Rudolf Steiner, Paul Klee and many others who stayed at the retreat and basked in the healing atmosphere of the mountain landscape .
Bellotti embraced the duality of rationality and expressive creativity as two sides of a style identity that is “layered like human nature,” he said, “because I believe that brands have a complex personality, not always one-sided and linear, rather similar to that of people. .” The collection he sent out today was a beautiful, sensible exercise in balancing the contradictions between practicality and imagination, elegant design and subtly humorous details.
For both genders, outerwear formed the core of the collection, cut with soft precision, mostly in high-quality leather. Elongated straight or boxy blazers paired with matching shorts, pencil skirts or relaxed trousers were offered alongside A-line dusters and sleeveless zip-up bombers and treated with a fresh, youthful approach. Eccentricity and the ‘out of control element’, as Bellotti put it, were expressed in taffeta minicrinis, poufy ultra-short ballerina skirts or tiny tutus made of swirls of rosettes and girandoles, emerging from masculine trench coats in shiny black leather, or combined with a square office shirt with short sleeves in fresh Swiss poplin.
To add a witty tribute to Swiss traditions, a strawberry print that adorned both a pretty one-piece swimsuit and a small rectangular handbag reminiscent of a child’s miniature travel bag was pulled from a picnic tablecloth. ‘Appenzeller’ talismans in the shape of small cowbells were made into bag hangers, which hung from the straps of trapeze crossbody bags in bright, cheerful colors.
As a first outing, it was promising for Bellotti, whose approach to the Swiss label’s legacy felt both considered and gentle, consistent enough to warrant further exploration and moving forward. Bally doesn’t need fancy twists or avant-garde fashion positioning, but rather a modern, intelligent, focused renewal of its historical codes.
