Bally Spring 2025 Ready-to-Wear Collection

With the precision of a Swiss watchmaker, as one would expect from the creative director of a brand based in the Alpine country, Simone Bellotti mastered his spring collection with the sharp-edged grace that’s becoming his trademark. It was a compelling showcase that solidified Bally’s quietly emerging fashion cred.

At a preview, Bellotti’s moodboard featured an eclectic mix of imagery, but one portrait stood out, that of Hugo Ball, the sound-poetry author and founder of the Dada movement in 1916 Zürich. Surrounding Ball’s image were photos of rustic, oddly-shaped cowbells, rusted shoehorns, and Man Ray’s artwork The Gift—a flat iron with thumbtacks glued along its sole. What captivated Bellotti about Ball’s portrait was the striking costume: a tall cylindrical hat and a metallic cone-shaped cape, with a stiff high collar framing his face. “I like its simple precision,” Bellotti remarked.

Bellotti revisited the mountain-like, sloped-shoulder silhouette throughout the collection, integrating it into the necklines of coats and blazers. In some ensembles, this shape was paired with curved lines inspired by cowbells, reinterpreted as rounded miniskirts—some of which were lifted at the front to reveal matching culottes beneath. A standout was a burgundy leather coat featuring a sloped collar and shoulders, with a cinched waist that flared into a poufy pannier skirt.

Bellotti said his intent was to focus on experimenting with form. Though crafted from structure-retaining materials, the pieces did not appear rigid; rather, they conveyed an off-kilter fragility, like a sort of impractical Swiss couture, lyrical and somewhat anarchic, reminiscent of a Dadaist performance. Said Bellotti: “Dadaism was about a sense of play, and gentle subversion. What I’m looking for is finding equilibrium between rationality and whimsy.”