Jonathan Anderson has joined the ramping-up of menswear shows in Paris this season, taking Loewe men’s from an exhibition presentation to a runway format for the first time. “After five years, I felt like we needed to show it moving,” he said. “Menswear has quadrupled since we began.”
Positioned as backdrop, setting the tone, there was a yellow ocher cloth sculpture by Franz Erhard Walther. His body of work—performances which involve getting people to assemble fabric on their bodies in unconventional ways—is an apt metaphor for Anderson’s knack for abstracting shapes and putting familiar/unfamiliar details in odd places.
This time, he’d evolved what looked on first sight to be chaps, which flapped open to add an ’80s type of volume in the trouser leg. On second, third, and fourth sights, it became clear that they were actually unzipped boots, going all the way up to a belt. Over to Anderson: “We were looking at gaiters and fishermen. It was early-’80, kind of, when we unzipped them. It created kind of flaps—Western, but non-Western. It was how to take something fetish and de-fetishize it.” Plus, they served the purpose of flagging the message: This is a luxury leather house.
Here’s the thing about Anderson, though. In one breath, he can be parsing the multiple meanings behind an object, and in the next be speaking merchandise: “How do you take basics, and make them fashionable? It’s about the border between these two. How do you get a customer to buy just a knit, and get the full impact of it?”
The point is that Anderson’s high-concept approach is a deceptively solid framework for unerringly desirable pieces which have people running to get their hands on them. That goes for his own JW Anderson label as well as for the handcrafted ethos he’s installed as central to Loewe’s luxury attraction. Take the variety of knits—running the gamut from a kind of striped caftan to elongated sweaters to a skinny rugby shirt with cashmere track pants in a different striped colorway. Or the simple, genius quirk of a striped blue-and-white shirt with beige shearling popping out of its seams. Or any of the bags showcased here: a cornflower blue leather fanny pack, an enlarged men’s version of the women’s Puzzle bag, to name but two.
We haven’t got on to the tailoring yet, but we must: It’s another high-fashion shot in the arm for Loewe’s fashion quotient. Looks were slim in the torso, with wide-ish trousers. A pin-striped iteration had one lapel in white satin. “I like the idea of an Oxford bag, it’s very elegant, I think. We’d done the suit in the women’s collection—we kept the waist, and extended the back,” said Anderson. “There’s something quite chic and suave about it.”
