October 15, 2024 |
Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe, now officially the world’s hottest brand, according to Lyst, forms a canon of work that makes a like-for-like comparative almost impossible. Indeed, the brand’s narrative arc is so broad and far-reaching that a suitable metric, put simply, does not exist. From ready-to-wear and accessories, manga collabs to film merch, fragrance and home fragrance to soap on a rope, Loewe operates within a space of its own creation – ever expanding, never compromising.
Here, we focus on the shoppable now and a précis of the standout AW24 season: handbags and frock coats, big-shoulder jackets, shoes and those incredible trousers. Seen here, worn by model Agel Akol and shot by Vanina Sorrenti, these knockout voluminous numbers have a horseshoe shape – but that shape changes. On the short walk from changing room to set, the trousers were “spinning” and “moving around the leg”.
The fabric comes with a sort of imprinted memory; children of the 1980s will remember the Slinky toy, a Google search away. Anderson explores fashion that is performative: clothes made for an entrance. Or an office that’s also a disco. These new oscillating trousers come “grounded” with a spectacular evening jacket and its beaded lapel. It’s an Instagram meme waiting to happen, or it’s one already. The satirical churn of social media-generated memes is a creative space that Anderson meditates on regularly, seemingly (and puzzlingly) finding inspiration by tuning into the daily bleurgh other designers dismiss. It’s here that he finds fanciful titbits and unlikely gems, all of which bring a unique flavour to a far bigger cultural soup. His remit is one of exhaustive research, classical art meets social studies. Craft! Design! Technique!
The bugle beading on the lapel of this very special jacket speaks to that signature Anderson-for-Loewe “barstool glam”. It’s camp, for sure, but it’s a measured camp. Camp by its very nature is “out of control”. It’s something the costume designer Nolan Miller knew well: that, with practice, even the most outré shoulder, nipped waist or energetic fabric can be reframed and tamed. Like Miller before him, Anderson knows that out of control can be brought under control to create camp clothes for those in control. An Alexis-for-Dynasty boardroom power jacket, worn with a Dominique Deveraux working a Sister Sledge tribute act trouser, is really where it’s at.
Today we ask: can a radish ever be radical? Sure! Even the chicest woman understands the power of a silly print. It’s the kind of silly (read: eccentric) you’ll find in much of Anderson for Loewe, on repeat. His Loewe is the great aunt gone cuckoo, but played by Emma Corrin. She’s the one shaking her empty glass in your direction. “The difference between plain mad and fabulously eccentric…” she might declare, “is jewels, darling. Lots and lots of lovely jewels.”
Packed with reels of incredible women who relish the glamour of the eccentric is the famed uptown Instagram account @ladiesofmadisonave, a delicious slice of excitingly stylish women born out of the monied New York fashion scene. Women who are seemingly never not shopping at Bergdorf Goodman or attending a fabulous charity ball. It’s a gorgeous celebration of the city’s finest wardrobes, many of which span decades. The amount of new Loewe worn with old couture is a testament to the breadth (and discerning eye) of the Loewe client.
Within the pantheon of designers – and the oodles of clothes these women have shopped – what they buy and how they wear it counts. Putting Loewe high-waisted jeans with a vintage embroidered Bill Blass evening jacket or a Bob Mackie pantsuit with a Puzzle bag speaks of respect but also rizz. These short video interviews reveal how Loewe has become part of these private collections built and treasured over years.
Within the mix, Anderson’s Loewe appears to go through a form of fashion “self-correct”, working in concert (when, on paper, it shouldn’t) with couture-like treasures from the past. It’s the same process but with an entirely different outcome, as you’ll see with something like the woven raffia Loewe shopper.
Originally destined for the beach in Biarritz, fashion’s hardest-working bag is more likely to be seen carrying a virtuous baguette somewhere on East London’s painfully trendy Broadway Market. Just as satellite dishes on the side of a house in the early Noughties signalled middle class, seeing the end of a baguette emerge from a designer shopper suggests much the same.
Sadly, Jonathan Anderson has no power to police how his bags are worn and by whom. As we have just voted on arguably the most important general election in a generation, here in the UK the winning Labour Party has not yet committed to “ending all visible baguettes sticking out of shoppers”. Which is a shame. Turn your eyes to the suit pictured here. Note, the shoulder sits just off; the trousers look wrong-fitting.
The design was inspired by paparazzi shots of an awkward-looking Prince Harry wearing a hand-me-down morning coat on his first day at Eton. It, at once, conjured images of class and the uncomfortable strictures of belonging to a public school, a school considered by many as the country’s unofficial holding pen for future prime ministers. Anderson found inspiration, too, in the still lifes and landscapes of the late American artist Albert York, some of which dotted the walls at the brand’s show space in Paris, which was built to resemble a gallery or grand country house. Unfamiliar with his work? Unsurprising. In a 1995 profile, The New Yorker described the painter as “the most highly admired unknown artist in America”. During his research, Anderson discovered York’s work was collected by Jackie Kennedy. Backstage, Anderson confessed to owning a York painting too.
Question. Does this tartan dress look drunk to you? Did the cloth come a cropper in the dye bath? Was there a screw-up at the Loewe mill? It’s part of what the house preaches as the “perfectly imperfect” – a tartan with a glitch built in. Its purpose? To re-evaluate what luxury perceives itself to be.
That Anderson’s design ethos (wacky geometries and oscillating pants) is still considered off-script by many in the luxury world says as much about the direction of travel for Loewe as it does the open mind, now practised, of a once-conservative clientele. Not that everything goes to plan. For fashion’s footsie perverts, autumn’s kitten heels are an absolute no-go for flirting. Saucy tryst at a high-end restaurant or not, what stylish woman would kick off such beautiful heels for a quick foot fumble, sous la table?
Loewe engages in an often challenging dialogue between designer and shopper; the argument being that a shopper, and certainly one shopping Loewe, is looking for – and willing to engage in – a challenge. But there’s a comfort that a higher eye finds in a challenge. Difficult > easy. Challenge > straightforward. Opting into the design thoughtfulness of Loewe also means opting out: do you lie awake at night thinking about the clothes in H&M?
Photographer VANINA SORRENTI
Fashion Editor SOPHIA NEOPHITOU
Text RICHARD GRAY
Model AGEL AKOL at PRM Agency
Hair HIROSHI MATSUSHITA using Oribe Hair Care
Make-up ANDREW GALLIMORE using Dior
Manicurist REME GRIFFIN
Digital operator PHILIP BRADLEY
Lighting assistants SAM ROBBINS and DAMIAN FLACK
Fashion assistants GEORGIA EDWARDS, SONYA MAZURYK and DONNA CHOI
Casting DAVID CHEN
Production ZAC APOSTOLOU
Clothing and accessories throughout by LOEWE
