Last season, Jonathan Anderson went for a small collection of ‘un-commercial’, couture-esque dresses and full skirts. For autumn-winter 2021, his Loewe has more of the ‘ready-to-wear’ aspect, yet it still has that signature, fabulously-eccentric-lady style. It’s all about bold colours and mood-changing zigzaggy prints here; the curiosity of avant-garde shapes; perfectly placed, succulently colorful accessories; and what Danielle Steel is feeling about fashion. Say what? Go to Loewe’s website, and there, to be sure, you’ll hear the world’s best-selling novelist in a podcast with Anderson. This is “the ‘why not?’ era,” she remarks. “I’m much more into fun things now…. I like silly stuff. I guess I get more eccentric as I get older…. Life is serious enough!” The collaboration with Steel came about through Anderson’s connection with her daughter Vanessa Traina. In a continuation of his printed-matter lockdown show alternatives, he came up with a Loewe newspaper, within which is a trail of the first chapter of Steel’s new novel, The Affair. Neatly enough, it’s a tale about a New York fashion editor in chief. The paper, with all the pictures of the Loewe collection, is “being distributed to a million readers” including readers of The New York Times, Le Monde, and Le Figaro. In other words, it’s time to embrace the fun and euphoria of fashion again – or at least to be able to imagine ourselves into the time when we can. “As much as people always see the cynical in luxury fashion, there’s something in it that releases endorphins that make you feel good,” Anderson said in a Zoom call with Vogue. For the shoot, he rolled out the yellow carpet in Paris at the Le Train Bleu restaurant, his own office at Loewe, and a private members’ club off the Champs-Élysées. Elaborate settings for Anderson’s skilled composition of bold silhouettes, his subtly wearable pieces and a gamut of bags and shoes that deliver quirk to the adventurous and classicism to the conservative. “I don’t see this as a collection about fantasy. I think it’s about this idea of projecting what a new reality will hopefully be,” he said. “I think fashion is going to be important in the next while, in making people gain the confidence of going back out and dressing up again. The whole point of this collection is: believe it, and it will happen.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.