Delphine Ninous has taken her last road trip for Belstaff. At the end of last month the heritage motorcycle jacket brand whose design (initially womenswear, then men’s too) she has led since 2014, announced (although not to us) that she was leaving to “pursue new opportunities.” Was Ninous thrown from the saddle on the sharp bend of a change of ownership or did she dismount of her own accord? That depends on who you listen to.
What we do know is Ninous has hopped back on the Eurostar to Paris for good and that Sean Lehnhardt-Moore, a designer with a spectacularly small online footprint, was simultaneously appointed in her place. The change comes a few months after Belstaff’s acquisition from JAB by Ineos, whose CEO Jim Ratcliffe is currently Britain’s richest person.
Due to some post-Ninous confusion about whether Belstaff wanted to draw the veil or be reviewed this season, we only got to glimpse her last menswear collection, or at least some of it, in the suite of a Milan hotel behind Armani, where the brand was holding its sales appointments. There was no Resort on the rails. Brand-language headlines were that the Roadmaster jacket name had been terminated in favor of the Trialmaster, and that a McLaren collaboration revealed (although not to us) at Pitti looks really excellent.
Ninous had rustled up yet more of the excellent variations on the moto jacket that is Belstaff’s bread and butter, especially some silky-but-nylon lightweight versions—a bit military—and some safari-suity variations in linen-cotton. There were also some pleasantly artificially sun-faded iterations of the Trialmaster in red and blue. Going on past evidence, this will be reflected in her Resort, which will also feature attractive standalone womenswear pieces (and great shoes) for which her Marant-honed natural instinct always felt a little suppressed under this label.
Following a series of eccentric stewardships, Belstaff was doing rather well under JAB. Now JAB has all but exited from prêt-à-porter in favor of Pret A Manger, it will be interesting to watch what Ratcliffe and Lehnhardt-Moore do with the brand. There are signs that this is a business deal based on passion: Ratcliffe is apparently hatching plans to revive Land Rover’s Defender, among the most beautiful vehicles in the world. If he’s a Landy head with an eye for heritage then it follows that he’s got a thing for Belstaff (whose original Longton HQ under founder Eli Belovitch is only 50 miles from its new owner’s birthplace just outside of Manchester)—so let’s see!
