It’s as blindingly obvious as a flouro-yellow T-shirt that fashion’s in the mood for raving this summer. No need to overthink: the long-forbidden pleasures of dancing in close proximity to hundreds of others in a club—the heightened idealism of togetherness-in-hedonism that rave culture stood for—is a post-pandemic fantasy. Jonathan Anderson projected it here and beyond with all the multi-manifested photography, printed matter, video and social media imagery that surrounds his Loewe menswear collection. “A message of electrifying hope and optimism,” he called it.
On a call from Paris, Anderson said it felt like a collection “that’s more personal to me in terms of clothing experimentation.” As a boy going to Ibiza on holiday with his family in the ’90s, he was an awed witness to the rave scene: “I went with my brother to Manumission; I remember just watching people and thinking, ‘Wow, in this moment these people could take over the world.’”
Anderson’s ability to drink in his Balearic holidays from a tender age and turn them into retail gold is already wildly appreciated by the many, many global fans of Paula’s Ibiza, the smash-hit side-brand he’s created for Loewe. But the rave culture thread in this main line collection is something that goes deeper to who he is—and who he was in his formative years as a gay teen coming from conservative Northern Ireland, a country which only legalized same-sex marriage in 2020. The visual and emotional impact on the boy Anderson must have been vast. Was that the point where he first linked clothes with euphoria and freedom? “There’s nothing better than when you see a look that transforms your mind,” he remarked in a video on the Loewe website.
Anderson’s work in menswear always circles around the inspiration of looking at teenage characters, the awkward beauty of youth: Those few years when everything about identity, sexuality, and rebellion is indelibly intense. As a designer, it’s where he mines his liberation from all sorts of norms—from the conventions of garment shape, to shaking up ideas of ‘what goes with what.’ He said he’d had time to properly examine all of that in the past year-and-a-half. “Why do I make clothing? What does gender mean? Or why am I drawn to showing [gender] neutrality within menswear?”
He now traces it back to the time in his adolescent life when he was literally driven back to his closet to experiment with clothes. “Growing up in Northern Ireland, when I was in high school, I remember going to TK Maxx, where I bought a Dolce nylon orange jacket, and a pair of Jean Paul Gaultier velour trousers in a tiger print which had a weird zip on them,” he said. “They were discounted until they were about £9 or something. I wore them to a high school disco and got completely destroyed for it. People immediately questioned my sexuality for doing that.” It didn’t stop him, though. “Since that period, I collected all these things. I asked my parents to take the doors off my wardrobe and I laid out the things that I wanted to wear, but never did. So ultimately,” he continued, “I think in menswear it comes back to a fantasy of what I’d love to have been able to wear.”
You can see all of that surging through this ‘show’ (a misnomer, since there was no physical runway), which Anderson would rather dub “a music video.” It’s not exactly that either, but, as multifaceted as it is, it’s completely in the present. From the random-yet-precise way he’s draped satin dresses—which at second glance have a satirical menswear necktie going on—through pieces cut with portholes to reveal knees or nipples, it’s all about breaking down convention, and hoping to build up trust and alignment with what young people are feeling. “It’s dress-up,” he laughed. “Ultimately, with clothes, it’s the confidence that pulls it off—and these are very optimistic characters.”
Anderson brought in two brothers-in-arms from two generations as collaborators. David Sims, the photographer-legend of early ’90s British grunge/crossover culture who was part of the first wave of rave parties as a kid, shot the campaign with a free rein to find young people in Europe to wear the collection. “David has been able to capture who I am. Given it a painterly edge and made it cinematic,” said Anderson. Loewe published a box-set of books containing Sims’ photos and the work of the painter and photographer Florian Krewer. The 34-year-old Krewer is “part of the same peer-group as myself, but he’s German, living in New York,” said Anderson. “He makes these amazing snapshots of life, has such an amazing way to look at nightlife. He’s been such a subconscious influence on me over the past couple of years. There’s fragility, and at the same time, strength. They’re a depiction of himself. When I look at his photos, I see his paintings, where they’re coming from.”
Where Jonathan Anderson has come from—including whatever trauma, setbacks, and homophobia he’s been through—has also powered his talent. Ultimately, what he most loves about where he is now is being able to make “clothing that still, today, is like seeing a crocodile on a street.” Extreme design for extreme times—sounds about right. “You know: Do it like it’s your last collection,” he laughed. “And have fun with it.”
