BALLY Spring / Summer 2025 collection “Counterpoint 3”

Circling the 16th century cloisters of the Chiostro di San Simpliciano in Milan, the BALLY Spring / Summer 2025 collection “Counterpoint 3” by creative director Simone Bellotti harks back to the origins of the Dada artistic movement in Zurich a century ago. A playful collage of attitudes and personas takes shape, revisiting BALLY’s heritage with an irreverent energy. An artistic current abounds, as symbols from our collective consciousness are reshuffled and deconstructed between natural and artificial, historic and modern concerns. Decorum and rigour are subverted by avant-garde action

and thought, provoking creations imprinted with both fragility and desire.

A concave steel habit worn by the poet Hugo Ball informs the cocooning silhouette, framing the décolleté with an operatic volume. From this defiant gesture, a wardrobe revolves around the petal-like folds of a ruffled peplum, a rounded sleeve, and the scrunched and moulded drape of taffeta or silk gazar. Sculptural tailoring is cut in dry summer twill and fine BALLY leathers that nip the waist or fall towards the knee in sober lines. Bright technical outerwear fuses protection with sartorial ease, folded bell skirts and gossamer dresses recall spring mountain flora, and faded rose prints blossom on fine cashmere knits and Watteau-back tops. Codes are questioned in a Dadaist approach to dressing, twisting archetypes in a layered language of clothes at play.

For Spring / Summer 2025, a new anthology of BALLY footwear styles synthesises pillars of the House archive in architectural and ornamental forms. Building on strong foundations of Swiss craftsmanship and style, a new Glendale rises on a slim pedestal heel, the lace-up Scribe is elevated on a block heel and platform T-strap sandals are edged in fine metalwork. Brogued derbies and cut-out Mary Jane brogues are studded with bright saddlery studs, and slotted sandals are framed in punk spikes. The Beckett satchel appears oversized in supple glossy leathers, as trapeze and bell-shaped doctor’s bags pop in the season’s alpine floral palette with topstitched details. Engraved belt buckles and handbag straps are modelled after an antique hammered shoe horn, joining acorns, bells and mushrooms like whimsical souvenirs scattered throughout.