Dive Brief:
- Simone Bellotti was named design director of Bally, after joining the company late last year.
- Bellotti joined the design team in October 2022, and his internal promotion comes two weeks after the departure of Bally’s previous creative director, Rhuigi Villaseñor, who joined the Swiss luxury fashion house in January 2022 and designed only two collections.
- Bellotti’s first collection will be presented for spring/summer 2024 and will be shown during Milan Fashion Week in September.
Dive Insight:
Prior to the news, Bally had announced that the upcoming coed S/S24 collection would be completed by Bally’s internal design team, with whom Bellotti has been working since joining the company.
Although largely an under-the-radar name in fashion, Bellotti spent 16 years working at Gucci as head of men’s ready-to-wear special projects, collection sportswear senior designer and senior menswear designer. Before that, he was a senior menswear designer at Dolce & Gabbana, Bottega Veneta and Gianfranco Ferré.
His promotion stops just short of naming him creative director, the role held by Villaseñor.
Bally CEO Nicolas Girotto told WWD that Bellotti’s work with the Bally design team over the past nine months will allow him to “continue to interpret and rejuvenate our signature codes in the context of today. Simone’s passion and appreciation for Bally’s heritage, coupled with his extensive industry experience, will enable us to continue to execute on our vision of creating timeless and elegant products that uphold our legacy of craft and stand the test of time.”
While Luxembourg-based private equity firm JAB Holdings, which owns Bally through its JAB Luxury division, will not disclose exact sales figures per company policy, the company told WWD earlier this month that its year-to-date sales rose 20% compared with 2022. Girotto, who took on the Bally CEO role in 2019, has been steadily working to reposition the brand in order to appeal to a younger audience — an effort Villaseñor was meant to be part of. Neither Bally nor JAB Holdings responded to a request for comment by press time.
