Bellotti is an apt pupil: studious and methodical, it would seem, but also a bit dreamy. “Pure is a word that she was always saying, and this is something that really interests me a lot,” he says. “Jil Sander is a brand that, for me, represents a way of being. This continuous search for the essence, this search for purity, is something very aligned to what I like.”

For his opening act at the label this summer, Bellotti went back to the source, in a manner of speaking, producing a limited edition EP by the Italian composer Gianluigi Di Costanzo, who goes by the name Bochum Welt—it sold out, Bellotti proudly reports—and an accompanying music video, shot in Jil Sander’s native Hamburg. He visited the German city for its launch party. “When you go there, you understand many things about this brand, because the city has this very, let’s say, elegant side, very classic. But at the same time, there’s also something a bit unusual and controversial and industrial. The port, the water, the light is crazy.”

Having watched his trajectory, it seems certain there’ll be an undercurrent of something at Bellotti’s Jil Sander. A charcoal gray dress on his final Bally runway lingers in the mind: It was as prim as can be from the front with a below-the-knee hem and a collar that nearly grazed the chin; only when it turned did the emerald green shearling panel that wiggled down its back reveal itself.

Unfolded, these Scheltens & Abbenes books function as a sort of exhibition.

Photo: Courtesy of Scheltens & Abbenes