To open on a fun piece of fashion trivia, this is not Edie Campbell’s first turn as the face of Jil Sander. That honour came back in 2013, when she starred in a campaign shot by David Sims during the year-and-a-half long returning tenure of its namesake founding creative director. While the prolific British model’s gamine features and piercing, curious gaze remain as arresting in those pictures as they do in these you see today, it’s clear from looking at them that much has changed at the German-born, now Italian-based fashion house.

Which would make sense. Jil Sander, after all, now sits under the creative control of Simone Bellotti, an Italian designer quickly credited with both restoring the brand’s tenets of sharp minimalism and considered restraint while bringing an emotional viscerality to the table; an often uncanny, sensorial quality that, rather than counter the braininess its long been renowned for, beefs it out with welcome, weird texture. Punchier, less clipped and all the more relevant for it.

The designer’s intentions for the house became especially clear in his sophomore collection, a material negotiation of the tension between the “idea of home as a place where you feel protected, and it being a place you want to leave to discover something different,” he explains. A sense of knowing (and, crucially, respecting) the rules while wanting to shake things up, essentially.

Courtesy Jil Sander.

Courtesy Jil Sander.

This premise was the impetus for the campaign we see here, a vignette shot by Moni Haworth steeped in the British-born imagemaker’s haute-gloom aesthetic. In it, Campbell staggers, turns and embraces herself with dancerly exaggeration, the humanity expressed through her movement both animating the clothes and highlighting the uncanniness of the set – a loose assemblage of synthetic furniture pieces, arranged on a drizzly runway. And not the fashion show sort, as attested by planes soaring overhead.

Highly cinematic – and high concept – it feels almost anathema to the glossy, crisply commercial and often quite blunt visual narratives that shape most major house’s campaign. Imbued with “subtle imperfection”, it’s Bellotti’s attempt to turn the brand into an echo of the reality of “a human personality”, disrupting its precise, pristine image with an energy that almost feels “off”. Campbell’s casting might, then, seem curious – she is one of the most emblematic supermodels of her time, a person often seen through a lens of perfection and polish.

While her appearance here is still very much in line with her well-earned status, there’s a grit to the pictures – and to Campbell’s presence within them – that reminds us that fashion photography doesn’t always have to be about eliciting fantasies of “precision and perfection”, as Bellotti says. Rather, there’s power in imagery that echoes the complex emotional landscapes of “our own lives – we are not coherent all the time.”

Below the Jil Sander creative director and model discuss the importance of an open creative brief, whether Campbell’s love for horses has informed her modelling, and the delicious weirdness of Simone Bellotti’s clothes.

So, the campaign was shot on an runway, correct?

Yes, it was at this little airport near the mountains outside of Milan.

What were some of the moods, emotions and references that came up in discussions around what you wanted to achieve with the campaign?

We had some ideas around directors like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, which originally inspired the set for the autumn/winter 2026 fashion show, so the idea was to create something with a very cinematic effect. We wanted to create this tension, but also represent this very strong woman. And also movement was crucial – Pina Bausch was mentioned early on.

What was it about Edie that spoke to this vision? Had you worked together before?

We’d never met before, but I felt this energy from the very first time I saw her. I could see that she felt very confident, very sure of herself in acting out in this story. And that’s something that’s very close to the origin of this brand, which was created by a very strong, very independent woman that really believed in herself.

There was also such an immediacy to her. She arrived in the morning, but she was a bomb – the energy that she transmitted to us was immediate. And this element of instinct is something which is very important for me to add to the brand, especially one that’s typically associated with a perhaps more ‘cerebral’ spirit. Seeing her feel so free to move, to really feel the character, reflected exactly what I feel about this brand. It’s about trying to be immediate, trying to represent a deeply felt emotion.

Courtesy Jil Sander.

Courtesy Jil Sander.

Edie, what drew you to Simone’s vision? What was it that resonated with you?

It was exciting to go back and to work with Jil Sander again – and particularly under a new creative director. Almost always, as a model, you arrive on set knowing nothing about what the day’s work is going to be. Though, with where the fashion industry is at commercially, you expect that, on a campaign shoot, it’s going to be very commercially driven. Very, like: “We need to get this handbag, the clasp of the handbag, the shoe shot, the cut for TikTok…” But what was so nice about this was coming on set, and Moni coming and talking me through all her references. They were super abstract, really expressive. She was talking about all the cinematic references, and then mentioned Pina Bausch – and, incidentally, I’d just been to see one of her dances the week or so before, so that was really in the forefront of my mind.

How did seeing those references then inform the persona you inhabited on set?

I loved being this woman unraveling on a wet runway with planes going overhead. But what was really great about it was that this woman unravelling wasn’t at all hysterical. She’s really leaning into it, relishing the opportunity to be completely free. It’s a real howl at the moon kind of moment.

The level of energy and emotion that came out of you was so strong. And to me, neither of those things are things that can be considered “minimal”. They’re things that exist really significantly within ourselves, and to see that blowing up was really amazing.

Yeah, I think I may have needed to exercise some demons when I arrived on set that day. There was obviously something that needed to burst forth.

Yes [laughs]. But I was also thinking about the fact that you’re someone who has a deep connection to horses… someone who is able to relate to these animals that are 100 per cent power, 100 per cent energy. Being able to do that means that you have also a very strong sensibility, which means that strong energy. I had that feeling that really came out, even if I didn’t know you before.

Courtesy Jil Sander.

Courtesy Jil Sander.

Edie, do you think that your life outside of modelling, in particular your relationship to horse riding, helps you with tapping into a more intuitive emotional state?

I don’t know. I’ve always wondered if there are any transferable skills between my life as a model and my life as a horse rider, and to be frank, I’m not sure that I’ve ever found any… But I had actually arrived on set directly from an intense, five-day competition, leaving right in the middle to go to Milan to shoot this and then return. That made this experience a really nice bookended creative interlude. There was something quite surreal about making it to the set, having my hair set in this bleached screen siren do with this unravelled air, and then head back to Newcastle to drive up into the Borders to resume the competition.

How much conversation was there around what was expected of you as a model, and how much license you had for your own creative interpretation?

While I’d never met or worked with Moni before, she’d talked me through some of the references and left me with her printed-out PDF so I could see the world she was envisaging. And then the location was quite visually expressive, so, I don’t know, I just went for it. It was totally instinctual. I think the hair was very transformative and really got me into character. And then it was a little bit drizzly on the day, which was quite cinematic… But I didn’t really think that much about she was or she was unraveling. It was more about channelling the reality that she was, storming up and down an airport runway in the rain with planes flying overhead.

Sometimes as a model, you have to give yourself a bit of a pep talk about really being expressive and really going for it and not being this embarrassed English person. But for some reason, with this, I really didn’t need any encouragement. As soon as I put on the clothes and got on set, it just felt really natural. Also, Moni was exclusively shooting moving image – and then taking stills from that footage – which meant that I could just keep going with the movement. I didn’t need to stay in frame, or even on set. I could just really let rip and keep going infinitely; the camera was always rolling.

And what about the clothes? How did their design nuances shape who we see in the campaign?

There’s a certain clarity to the line of the clothes, but then within them, there’s that tension – and this slight uncanniness. A slit down both sides of the skirt that reveals the outside of your thigh, but it’s not a sexy secretary slit. A corset dress that’s half falling off, but is simultaneously gripping around your chest. High-shine shoes, and these big, dramatic coats – almost like undertakers’s coats. They were all quite evocative, both restraining and unraveling.

Simone, what’s your response to that review?

I feel so proud, especially hearing it from someone who has seen and experienced so much in fashion. Ultimately, it’s the purpose of our job: to evoke, even create, a way of thinking, of feeling through an object. And to evoke emotions that give you the confidence to do things you wouldn’t normally do. If that’s achieved, it’s a win.