Born in Los Angeles, California, Kenneth Price was best known for his abstract sculptures, mostly created from clay. In his brightly coloured ceramic sculptures, one could see nods to ancient Mexican earthenware, traditional folk pottery, and the Bauhaus fusion of crafts and fine arts. The particular interest of Loewe’s Creative Director, Jonathan Anderson, for Price’s work led to the unique and elegant pieces that compose this capsule collection. The clothing and accessories designs effectively portray the stylistic mood of the artist’s so-called ‘town units’: a series of various display objects that constitute some of his most functional artworks.
The collection was specifically inspired by a series of twenty unique hand-painted ceramic plates that Price made in the early 1980s for La Palme restaurant in Newport Beach. The motifs featured in the collection come from the artist’s town units: the La Palme, Easter Island, and LA Series. The sunny landscapes, bright pop colour and palm trees, along with the plate’s vibrant and lively sceneries, inspired the designs.
Among the techniques used, on the clothing pieces as well as leather accessories, are prints, allover prints, intarsia, and leather marquetry – a procedure that requires quiet mastery to be achieved, in which Loewe has specialized over the last years. The joyous stylistic mood proceeds particularly from the LA Series, and it’s transmitted through the loose volumes and cropped culotte trousers “that capture LA’s quintessential ease,” as Anderson explains.
The Loewe Ken Price capsule collection also features some of the artist’s colourful drawings as prints on silk shirts, sweatshirts, and t-shirts, graphics that are also turned into intarsia on cashmere cardigans and jumpers. Now, if we talk about the bags, we can’t avoid but looking at them as sculptures made by Price himself – practical and wearable sculptures, of course. Anderson is particularly proud of how they used the motifs on the iconic Loewe bags, where they have been interpreted in leather marquetry.
Finally, the intensely crafted Fringed series is launched as part of this capsule, consisting of finely woven leather baskets. Another proof that the collection speaks about the materiality of craft on so many levels. Being part of Loewe’s ethos, craft is reassessed this season and breathes in its modern liveliness.
