Contemporary. Loewe SS25

October 4, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

In his 10th anniversary show for Loewe, Jonathan Anderson wasn’t looking back at his all-time hits. It’s Jonathan: he’s a designer that is always looking forward. The delightfully surreal, but not overly on-the-nose collection began with a bouncingly light, flowered, off-the-shoulder crinoline dress. Corseting-free and hands in pockets, the look – which reappearead a couple of times in the show – felt absolutely contemporary and cool (unlike the stuffy prettiness at Alessandro Michele’s Valentino debut). Anderson finds sheer pleasure in messing with classicism. References to classical composers and painters on T-shirts – made in feathers – pictured Mozart, Chopin, Bach, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, and a Manet soldier boy. “I like this idea that they’re kind of like pinup rock stars,” Anderson said. “Like when you go to a museum or you go to a concert: experiential things that you want to take a memento of with you. The idea that music reminds us of moments in our lives.” Then there were his multiple reimagined French golden age couture dresses, all hoops and semisheer flower prints and trapeze-line silhouettes abbreviated to very short minis. Worn with sneakers, there was nothing fussy about his take on eveningwear. Again, a contemporary feel that many, many designers had a hard time grasping this season.

And to celebrate Jonathan Anderson’s victorious decade at Loewe…

ED’s SELECTION:

Loewe Orange Blossom Scented Candle

Loewe Toy Paneled Denim Ankle Boots

Loewe Argyle Wool Sweater

Loewe Leather-trimmed Padded Shell Bomber Jacket

Loewe Puzzle Fold Convertible Medium Leather Tote

Loewe Leopard-print Calf Hair Pumps

Loewe Asymmetric Floral-print Silk Dress

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Cryptic. JW Anderson SS25

September 18, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

In his spring-summer 2025 collection, Jonathan Anderson dissects the meaning – and substance – of clothes. The cuts are in-your-face, the textures are exaggerated in their tactility, the shapes go from super-slim to super-big. “I think where we are today is that there needs to be a kind of narrowing of things while the world is transitioning. I think fashion needs to kind of refocus somehow, because we’re in a moment where we, the industry, have to look at ourselves.” JW Anderson takes cues from surrealism, but with a realistic grit. Yet there’s a feeling of deliberate palette cleanse, a sense of reduction. “It’s more like this idea of starting from a blank page,” he said. “Where is the next decade going, and how do we work with it?” Cryptic.

ED’s SELECTION:

JW Anderson Layered Cotton Trench Coat

JW Anderson Embellished Suede Loafers

JW Anderson Pintucked Brushed-jersey Mini Dress

JW Anderson Hedgehog Resin Clutch

JW Anderson Embroidered Denim Mini Skirt

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Men’s – Birds of a Feather. Loewe SS25

June 24, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

When you’ve got Paul Thek’s “Spinning Top” installation, Peter Hujar’s “Shoe for Elizabeth” photograph, a Charles Rennie Mackintosh “Argyle” chair and Carlo Scarpa’ “Easel” scattered around the runway, then you know it must be a Jonathan Anderson fashion show. No other designer has such a sensitivity towards contemporary art like Loewe‘s creative director, who often works and creates like a curator. This season, however, Anderson resorted to radical restraint in regards of his menswear. “Razor looks” is how he described his approach. It indeed was sharp. Slim silhouette, very French C-suite tailoring with almond-toe leather oxfords in black opened the show. Shorts and t-shirts were painted with a cable knit shaped finish. Edged in golden piping and emanating a shiny gleam, they appeared almost ceramic. A short-sleeve shirt was fabricated in sections of tonal fringe that resembled a hairy houndstooth, while a long brown coat was made in nappa leather on its right side that gradually transitioned into ostrich on its left. Anderson said the gold or monochrome feathers were there to divide our view of the faces beneath them as part of his consideration of forced perspective. This was a collection that stimulated you to question exactly what it was you were seeing, without going for chaotic eclecticism that Anderson has been channeling lately.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Men’s – Irrational Approach. JW Anderson SS25

June 18, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

“Irrational clothing” is how Jonathan Anderson described the idea(s) behind his JW Anderson spring-summer 2025 collection. The sheer number of concepts the designer played with on his runway is a lot to take, especially at menswear Milan Fashion Week where most designers barely deliver one, substantial idea. The wearable collage of adjacently sourced thoughts all set on designing garments that aggravated and stimulated the outer reaches of familiarity. Liner jackets in lushly colored silk and hula-hoop-hemmed, billows-pocketed denim gilets were both delivered in steroid-shot proportions to transform them beyond their conventional categories. “Sometimes it’s about movement and sponginess and being tactile,” offered Anderson of the three inside-out knit mega bomber jackets that followed. Pastel leather supersized blouses that followed a few looks later just looked so delightfully squishy. But there was also a sense of utilitarian toughness, some sort of exaggerated mannishness rooted in historicism. Take the pants in the closing look, musketeer-ishly tucked into vintage military-style boots unlaced up from the shin. Anderson’s disruptively irrational approach to worn façades became even more evident in a series of three two-story cardigans and two taller shifts knit with purposefully homespun craftiness to resemble various English architectural styles. The designer also proposed a not-so-discreet return to the tie in menswear, in XXL sizes, creating a cartoonish caricature of a businessman’s attire. Shirts, jackets, and a coat were affixed with roundly folded supersized silk tags in harlequin colors that resembled deflated balloons. They were lovely and strange. And then, in a very JW manner, another random element that will be a hit: the sweats and knits featuring vintage Guinness advertising. The designer said this was partially because he is Northern Irish and a fan of Guinness and partially because he has always relished that non-fashion brand’s history of radical image making, from the vintage pieces showcased here to Jonathan Glazer’s 1999 surfer advertisement. Now I wonder which of these concepts will reappear – even subtly – in Anderson’s forthcoming collaboration on costumes for Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” starring Daniel Craig, premiering this August in Venice.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Nothing Is What It Seems. Loewe AW24

March 3, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

This was a Loewe by Jonathan Anderson collection that can be comprehended as a line-up of utterly beautiful, artisanally made clothes, but also in terms of something much more conceptual. The framework of this show – set in a private exhibition of small landscape and domestic scenes by the late American painter Albert York – is the context for the designer’s quite off-kilter reflection on the meaning of luxury; specifically a zooming in on the interior landscapes and extremely decorative antique objects collected by wealthy Americans. “I started exploring this idea of provenance and why we buy things and why things come to have meaning,” he said. “The idea of an outsider looking into a world that we don’t experience.” Naturally, Anderson’s intertextual mind was shooting off, looking at the insanely ornate collectibles – elaborate china, tapestry embroideries of pets, Chippendale furniture – that women interior designers “specifically of the 1920s” placed for their clients in their Upper East Side apartments. And there we have the provenance behind the Loewe prints of chintzy fabric and wallpaper flowers, the painted radishes, buttercups, and foliage of English early-18th-century Chelsea porcelain. A silvered collar on a gray cashmere overcoat, masquerading as look-alike fur, turned out to be carved wood. Trompe l’oeil “caviar”-beaded embroidery smothered everything from tracksuits to curtain-fabric balloon trousers. One of the show-stopper bags was a fully detailed bunch of antique Chelsea porcelain asparagus. A replica of a replica from nature, served up once more as the ultimate luxury fashion object for the 21st-century collector.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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