Jil Sander Hits Play Ahead of Simone Bellotti’s Debut

A Sonic Prelude to the Designer’s First Collection at Milan Fashion Week

Before Simone Bellotti unveils his first collection for Jil Sander in Milan on September 24, the brand has taken an unexpected detour—through sound. Released this week, the new JS EP is a seven-track vinyl and digital drop composed by electronic musician Bochum Welt and designed to serve as Bellotti’s first creative statement since stepping into the role of creative director.

“A beginning is a dialogue,” reads the brand’s introduction to the project. Instead of teasing clothing, Bellotti’s debut opens with atmosphere—emotional, visual, and aural. “By choosing music for his first Jil Sander project, Simone Bellotti aims at exploring a tool that entices and expresses emotions. The move signals the intention to support music on the long run, as integral to the definition of the Jil Sander landscape.”

The Hamburg-set video for the track Wanderlust sets the mood: poetic, dualistic, and drifting between stillness and chaos. Directed by Sean Vegezzi, it mixes cinematic scenes and raw, real moments with local cast members, all scored by Bochum Welt’s blend of ambient, IDM, and experimental house. As the brand puts it, “Hamburg is the backdrop of the video: a wanderlust tale happening in an everyday setting, drifting between worlds and opposites.”

The EP itself, now available on vinyl at Jil Sander boutiques and online at jilsander.com, includes tracks such as Crystal Ice, Night’s Frost, and More Light (Escape Mix). Welt—whose real name is Gianluigi Di Costanzo—takes his moniker from the German word for “world” and a powerful astronomical telescope, a fitting metaphor for the wide-ranging scope of Bellotti’s first gesture.

“In Simone Bellotti’s eyes, Jil Sander is a house that owns duality,” the house explains. “Its aesthetic is based on the power of heightened simplification, and the energy released by the face-off of strictness and lightness, rigor and abandon.” That same tension plays out across the music and video, suggesting a future where garments aren’t the only way this house communicates.

To mark the launch, Jil Sander hosted a private vernissage at OHG Hamburg, welcoming guests from Germany’s fashion, art, and design scenes. And while the runway debut is still weeks away, the soundtrack is already here.

“Simone Bellotti chose music for his first Jil Sander project, exploring a tool that entices and expresses emotions,” the brand explained in a recent statement. The eleven-track album reflects what it calls Jil Sander’s “dual essence” of “rigor and abandon,” blending ambient tones with IDM and experimental house. The project follows the release of the Hamburg-shot music video for the lead track “Wanderlust.”

Bochum Welt—a name synonymous with emotional minimalism in the electronic sphere—has roots as deep as the brand itself. His breakout was released via Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label in 1994, the same year Jil Sander opened its first Milan showroom. The collaboration draws from the House’s Hamburg origins, paying subtle homage to German sonic pioneers like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream—who shaped electronic music just as Jil Sander defined sharp-edged 20th-century tailoring.

“A beginning is a dialogue,” reads the brand’s statement. And Bellotti’s is a quiet one—more synth than speech. But with this EP, he’s already made something clear: for this new chapter of Jil Sander, sound will be just as important as silhouette.