She’s a traveling woman, “a bit more bohemian,” Jonathan Anderson was saying backstage. “She's broken out of her domestic space and she’s freer.” On this notional neo-hippy trip of hers, this enviably serene-looking Loewe wearer had picked up all kinds of souvenirs. Liberty prints from London, paisleys from India, traditional handwoven fabrics from South America and North Africa, a patchwork quilt from the United States, and a mother-of-pearl shell pendant picked up (one fantasized) either in an expensive art gallery shop in the South of France or from a peddler on any beach from Bali to St Barth. From four looks in, there can scarcely have been a woman in the audience who didn’t want to just be her.
And for some, that’s absolutely going to include her taste in crazy curly-toe trainers. What the . . . Jonathan? “They were based on a pair of Moroccan slippers I loved and had for ages,” he laughed. “They’re like elf shoes! They were humorous. There’s no sense to them. But they make you laugh!”
The dash of out-there ridiculousness amidst the calm of this incredibly easily understood collection only served to enhance it. “Relatable” and “accessible” are often used as fashion-snob synonyms for inexpensive product. Yet Anderson’s redefinition of the hollow term luxury has filled it with tangible new meaning. On the one hand: On sight, you know where you could wear one of these T-shirt dresses or one of Anderson’s familiar long-midi fit and flare things. A romantic heart would sing to have one of those modern-day Tess of the d’Urbervilles cotton flower-print dresses. This is no-trouble fashion of a high-flown order. And on the other hand: You absolutely see it’s going to be incredibly expensive, and that it’s worth it. The level of innovative materiality going on in Loewe’s workshops—the craft, plus the sophistication—is astonishing. That is a subject Anderson really cares about: “If you don’t put the time into craft,” Anderson reasoned, “What’s the difference for the consumer who is going to touch the product?”
This is a designer who thinks right through to the reality in a store. “You can watch the show—which is a funny thing,” he said, “but at the end of the day, I want something people will want to go in and touch.”
The collection piqued that tactile curiosity, all right. There were mind-warping new applications of technique—like a half-shredded trenchcoat with the strands crimped into twirls. Other treatments, like the crushed gingham panels on T-shirt dresses, the patchworking on jeans, or the bobbly white knit involved in a squashy bag, seemed to have a wholesome, country-peasant provenance about them. If there’s anything that will get grown women to shop again, this is it. Mad, curly-toe things and all.
