This article first appeared on Vogue Runway.
Loewe announced today that Jonathan Anderson would be leaving his role as creative director. For just over 10 years, Anderson oversaw a transformational decade for the Spanish label, during which he took it from a small leather goods house to one of the most recognisable names in fashion, and certainly an insider favourite. Anderson’s tenure at Loewe will be remembered not for a singular aesthetic or sole It-product (though there were those too), but for his knack for constant evolution.
Anderson’s early years at Loewe were defined by his fascination with craft; he honed in the label’s savoir faire with leather and made that its most identifiable signature on the runway. Then, at the spring 2022 show, the first following the Covid pandemic, Loewe became an experimental, conceptual thing, where he explored all aspects of contemporary life; from our obsession with screens to virality and our growing inability to tell the “real” from the “fake”, giving these ideas gravitas with his clothes.
Looking back, Anderson’s story at Loewe is one full of charming contradictions — the hand versus the machine, esoteric artist collaborations and internet catnip celebrity front rows, familiar, wearable clothes or the garment as an object — that he embraced wholly. “We’ve had the pandemic, and now we have to come out of it different,” Anderson said at the time. “I think it’s a moment of experimentation. If you’re going to reset after this period, you need to allow a moment to birth a new aesthetic. Start again.” These are some of Anderson’s most significant themes at Loewe, as remembered by us.
Hand vs machine
One of Anderson’s most compelling and defined dichotomies has been that of hand-versus machine-made. Early on, up until the pandemic, Anderson underscored Loewe’s artisanal and craft-focused heritage — so much so his debut ready-to-wear collection featured leather swatch necklaces and leather hides peeling away from tops to emphasise the label’s leather beginnings. After the pandemic, his interest in craft evolved into a curiosity for technology, more often than not contextualised in conversation with nature. Think of the screens he placed on coats for his spring 2023 menswear show — the one with grass growing out of sneakers and coats — which featured videos of flocks of birds at sunset, tropical fish and flowers. See also the blurred floral prints in his AW23 collection and the fiberglass anthurium tops in his SS23 show, which put into question our ability to differentiate between the real and the fake in the age of technology and the internet. There was also his viral pixelated hoodie, most famously worn by A$AP Rocky. Most illustrative of this particular contradiction? The way his ceramic body plates from AW20 — the last pre-pandemic collection — seemingly evolved to transparent, plastic-y ones for SS22, his first post-pandemic show. — José Criales-Unzueta
Clothes vs can you even wear that?
Anderson’s tenure at Loewe is like watching a mad scientist’s slow descent — except it’s not a scientist but a designer just absolutely locked in to excavating what fashion can be. For his first two collections — menswear and then womenswear — the line-up was straightforward: T-shirts, straight-leg trousers (with ’90s oversized cuffs for men, and artfully tied self-belts for women) and handsome, no-nonsense knits. Anderson was working through a sort of edgy bohemian artist aesthetic that seemed to be rooted in the 1980s — his textures, colours and prints owed much to the decade, while his silhouette was often long and layered with dresses over pants, chunky jewellery, patchwork and embellishments that sometimes bordered on the quirky (remember the cat head necklaces from AW16?)
As the seasons wore on, his silhouettes began slowly unraveling and exploding; dresses and T-shirts and shorts half-floating off the body, jackets hammered from metal sheets, strange leggings with ruffled openings at the knees, dresses like mummy bandaids holding half-squeezed “balloon” against the body. If Anderson could figure out a way to put something on the body (or against it, or through it, or right next to it, or, or, or…) then it was fair game for a strut down the runway. — Laia Garcia-Furtado
These shoes are made for walking vs ceci n’est pas une shoe
Anderson hit on a few It-shoe styles; sometimes wildly popular because of their wearability and versatility, and other times wildly viral precisely because of their impossibility. He debuted the Ballet Runner in 2019, a sleek, ultra-flat sneaker with elastic around the ankle that had its origins in the classic ballet flat. Perhaps because it was released right before the pandemic, when suddenly everyone was looking for comfort above all else, the shoe was an instant sensation. Other shoes were practical but extremely odd, like the ankle boots spliced with a loafer front and a minuscule kitten heel or the high-top sneakers that curled up at the toe like an elf shoe. Then, there were the flights of whimsy: feet swaddled in leather like a blanket, life-size Minnie Mouse-esque heels, pointy pumps stepping on a balloon in a not non-erotically charged way, strappy sandals held up by a bottle of nail polish, or a bar of soap, or an upside down rose, or a nail through a broken egg shell with the yellow yolk spilling all around. For Anderson, the eternal question seems to be: when is a shoe not a shoe? — Laia Garcia-Furtado
Esoteric sets vs internet boyfriends
Who could forget the Loewe AW24 men’s show last year with its flock of internet boyfriends sitting front row? Thirst traps… err, suggestive moving images of everyone from Jamie Dornan to Omar Apollo and Manu Ríos were also projected on the walls of the show, together with collaged iconography and drawings of men by the artist Richard Hawkins. “An algorithm of masculinity” is how Anderson described the show, which intellectualised the way men exist in, and are consumed by, the internet nowadays. This was Anderson’s most astute combination of the esoteric art he decorates his sets with — sculptures by Lynda Benglis for SS24, paintings by Albert York for AW24, ephemeral artwork by Joe McShea and Edgar Mosa for AW22 menswear — and the of-the-moment, viral-friendly celebrities he hosts in his front rows. This is a story about the high-low appeal of Loewe under Anderson, yes, but also of his ability to engage with multiple pockets of culture simultaneously. — José Criales-Unzueta
Fan favourites vs deep-cut collaborations
On the topic of range, consider Anderson’s product collaborations. Most famously under his watch, Loewe partnered repeatedly with the much beloved Studio Ghibli, placing picturesque creatures from its hit films My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away on bags and clothing. But then there are Anderson’s artistic inclinations, which in many cases turned Loewe into the fashion brand equivalent to a hidden gem contemporary art gallery. See the T-shirts he created emblazoned with the works of David Wojnarowicz in support of Visual Aids, or those featuring an image of the artist taken by his mentor and lover Peter Hujar, whose work is a fascination of Anderson’s (the invitation to his SS25 menswear show last year was a print of one of his photographs). See also collaborations with William Morris in 2017, Ken Price in 2020 and Jon Brainard in 2021. At Loewe, Anderson certainly offered his fair share of things with massive pop culture appeal, but he also made sure to play to everyone’s love for a good artsy deep cut, with just the right amount of pretension. — José Criales-Unzueta
Playful vs serious
Anderson’s reputation for being a serious, designer’s designer is certainly well earned. His collections are high concept, the execution impeccable and he always has a well-crafted soundbite. To further emphasise his passion and pursuit of the high arts, he founded the Loewe Craft Prize in 2016 to highlight the importance of craft across a variety of different disciplines. By 2024, the winner would get €50,000. “It’s something that I really believe in, this idea that craft can tell us something about ourselves,” he said in 2023. It quickly became a prestigious award for artisans around the world: last year there were 4,000 entries. But Anderson contains multitudes, and he balanced this out with a playful side that could sometimes be downright silly. He launched Loewe x Paula’s Ibiza in 2017 as a way to pay homage to a small legendary boutique on the Spanish Balearic island, with summer-ready offerings like kooky statement sunglasses in neon colours, and beach-ready jorts and shredded tees. His home and perfume collections proved similarly tongue-in-cheek, with candles and perfumes that smelled like tomato, earth, water, or even marijuana. On social media is where his sense of humour unmistakably shone, where the Loewe TikTok engaged with almost every trend in a way that was somehow always funny and never cringe: see a dark green Puzzle bag flying over a mountain while tied to a drone as Wicked’s “Defying Gravity” plays in the background, or a meme that says “My phone when I accidentally spill water on it” in which the phone seems to go shopping on the Loewe website all by itself. — Laia Garcia-Furtado
Challengers vs Queer
Anderson had quite a 2024 with Challengers and Queer, the two films he designed costumes for. While both releases were directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes, they were entirely different in plot and treatment and, at their core, put on display two signature Anderson contradictions. There’s his time-bending passion for clothes, which were here contextualised by his sourcing of exclusively era-appropriate pieces for Queer stars Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey (underwear included) and his ambiguous “could be any time in the 2010s” take on style for Challengers, which included everything from stained Nike tennis clothing to Chanel espadrilles — and that one JFK Jr-inspired “I Told Ya” tee. There was also his evident ease in the world of a Zendaya-led summer blockbuster against his esoteric, indie self at home in a William S Burroughs adaptation. — José Criales-Unzueta
Some things never change
Still, there’s an exception to every rule, and while Anderson’s decade-long tenure at Loewe is indeed filled to the brim with contradictions, there are some elements to the Northern Irish designer’s oeuvre that have existed throughout. See above.
