At a time in fashion when everything’s up for questioning, Jonathan Anderson has taken a completely unique tack when it comes to presenting Loewe for men. This time, in addition to setting up a static exhibition of products at the Loewe showroom in Paris, he was also exhibiting another coup: a black-and-white photo narrative series—imagined as a story about a magician—he’d commissioned from the celebrated 85-year-old American artist Duane Michals. “He had carte blanche,” Anderson said. “He came to Madrid and shot these tableaux in an old theater. He painted the backdrops and made the props.” The magician, played by the actor Josh O’Connor, makes the model Erik Frey appear in a new Loewe outfit with each new “trick.”
Michals’s frames—tiny in scale—lined the room, making viewers peer in, spending time to take in the story. Why go to such left-field trouble to promote a brand? One reason: because Anderson likes following his instincts for researching art and craft. Another: because he can. His success at Loewe after four years has been exponential, lending the brand a distinct arts-and-crafts–based character and underpinning it with wildly successful product lines—the Puzzle bag being just one—in double-quick time.
The products were impressively on display at the showroom. You could reach out and touch everything: the duffle coats with their tufty shearling yokes, the incredibly soft padded and quilted leather bomber jacket, the shirts collaged with sailor’s knots, and the super-popular Loewe loose-weave jeans. The style of it, if you had to put a name to it, would land somewhere in the area of rustic, with a preppy accent, yet borne of super-sophisticated materials. “For me, it’s about the internal workings of a brand like Loewe,” Anderson said, pointing out the top-grade suede the Spanish house had been famous for long before LVMH bought it. His smartness, however, extends to puncturing any sense of snobbery around this sophisticated label. Scattered throughout were tapestry embroideries, cute coin purses, and leather key rings variously made in the shapes of squirrels, ladybirds, owls, and even a rugby ball.
Soft humor in a hard world, the experience of contemplating a great 20th-century American artist’s work for free—these are the byways of Loewe’s fashion that will stick in the mind as the rest of the super-turbocharged luxury-fashion highway thunders on.
