Show anyone a pictogram of a house on fire, and it will bring Greta Thunberg’s verbal metaphor urging climate action to mind. But—look closely—the images that are printed, scorchlike, on Jonathan Anderson’s sweaters in the background of this show date from an earlier emergency. They’re prints of the burning-house stencils that the AIDS activist and mixed-media artist David Wojnarowicz sprayed on derelict East Village buildings in 1982.
Anderson is adept at bringing almost forgotten art to the ambiance of his shows—both for his own label and at Loewe. But this rediscovery struck a deeper chord for the generations protesting against establishment intransigence in the face of apocalyptic crisis. It resonated tangentially in Anderson’s remark at the end of the show. Amid the anguish of the AIDS fatalities in the ’80s and ’90s—which Wojnarowicz documented, fought, and eventually succumbed to—“it felt like the end of the world,” Anderson observed. “But it wasn’t. As much as some of it’s really heavy, there’s an optimism. There will be a solution.”
When science and political will are galvanized by grassroots forces, perhaps there can be progress. Maybe that’s the learning, the hope Anderson was getting at. In any case it puts him in line with the search for some kind of spiritual solace, a yearning toward the things that matter, that’s been playing throughout the men’s shows—that and a sharper focus on editing clothes down to a brand’s essential values. (Check Prada, Gucci, and Off-White as recent examples.)
For JW Anderson, as for so many others, it entails looking back and being extra careful about going forward: “Thinking before you speak. Thinking before you act. Following up on things. Making product that is substantial, so it looks like it’s been there forever,” as he put it. In practical terms it meant striking a balance between blanket-wrap poncho-like coats—British trad and monklike, by turns—and expanding the vocabulary of nonbinary design that Anderson was first to explore with his early menswear shows in London.
There were the long, narrow shifts in paisley print carried over from his women’s collections, pleated peplum tops over shorts, skinny knits, and hefty padded coats. With that sure hand he has for eye-catching, Instagrammable branding, he accessorized with heavy gilt chains swathed as belts, blown up as shoe jewelry, and minimized as sewn-on half-necklaces. The JW Anderson anchor-like logo that he invented as a 23-year-old was stenciled into a felted tote bag and worked into a patchwork sweater.
Trying to do better in the wider world while still defending one’s own corner of the market is the dilemma that faces all fashion designers today. Anderson mentioned in passing that he’d worked to source fabrics in Britain—such efforts support heritage manufacturing and local workers and thereby enable more conscious purchasing.
That’s a field that is going to take time to illuminate. Nevertheless, as the gay-rights movement is continuing to prove, change can come. Short term, Anderson is putting his activism where his mouth is by selling Wojnarowicz Burning House sweaters online today, raising funds for Visual AIDS, a community organization founded in 1988 to raise awareness and support for HIV-positive artists.
