The Runway Rundown: Loewe Strips Out The Noise
This year, marks 10 years since Jonathan Anderson took the creative helm of Loewe, and, over the last decade, he’s grown the house from an under the radar Spanish leather goods brand to an LVMH mega label in the making. It’s been a slow burn ascent, but Anderson has consistently delivered on harnessing Loewe’s heritage of leather craftsmanship and adding layers of wit and whimsy to create fashion that just works.
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Now, after years of remaining something of a fashion insider label, Loewe has now fully broken through into the mainstream: in Lyst’s most recent index, which uses search and sales data to rank the most desirable labels of the moment, Loewe was crowned the world’s hottest brand. Anderson, it seems, has cracked the fine balance of leveraging culture, playfulness and humour to make an impact, but still delivers on serious clothes that still land. Case in point: very few designers would be able to make feathered capri-pants an appealing proposition. But somehow, on Friday morning at Paris Fashion Week, Anderson did.
He presented the Loewe SS25 offering in a sprawling white box, the outside walls decorated with sheet music, the inside totally bare save for a Tracey Emin bronze bird sculpture anchoring the space, small and delicate looking, sitting atop a tall post. ‘It's nearly like the music box,’ he explained after the show. ‘You have the Tracey sculpture: it's like a bird taking flight. It's a bird standing still, it's a bird watching, It's a kind of voyeur on everyone.’
The question Anderson tried to answer with his collection: What happens when you strip out all that noise? In the world of Anderson, it’s a blend of the surrealist, the thought-provoking and the desirable.
He played a lot with the idea of movement: chiffon dresses draped over wires were sculptural yet fluid, while the skirts of trench coats and shirts were suspended, floating mid air as models walked in overly elongated lace-up brogues. An iridescent lacquer dress was actually made of shells, backed onto georgette and cracked to create motion, Anderson explained.
Sequins were knitted together using a technique to evoke scales, adorning the miniest of mini dresses. Feathered T-shirts were printed with musicians (almost like slightly absurd band merch for classical figures like Motzart and Bach) and works by artists like Van Gogh (reminiscent of the kind of tees you’d buy in the museum gift shop) teamed with slim tailored trousers and high-top sneakers. Sumptuous nappa leather appeared in the form of capes and slouchily draped trousers. A new bag, The Madrid, also made a debut.
Back to those feather capri pants: they were actually created using an old couture technique, again, demonstrating how, underneath the whimsy, there’s real know-how and a deep appreciation for craftsmanship. ‘There's something where you get a drape in feathers that is sort of unusual…I think this is quite interesting, when you strip out the fussiness,’ Anderson said.
Anderson first started playing with wires and ideas of suspension at the Met Gala this year, when Loewe dressed Greta Lee. ‘Once you actually develop these things, it’s hard to actually let go of them, you want to perfect them more,’ he said. Tailoring is another category that Anderson had worked to refine over the past couple of seasons. ‘For me, it was like adding extra chapters. I feel it's like there is no point showing for clothing for clothing sake.’
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