Beige parquet flooring and a staircase with no clear starting point. This is how the new Spring/Summer 2022 Women’s runway brought to us by Loewe is set in motion. Jonathan Anderson’s creative directory marks the Spanish fashion house’s ascent after 2 years of worldwide uncertainty; the staircase is a symbol of maturation and experimentation, and it is the perfect way of introducing Loewe’s new collection. The venue carefully selected for the runway show is the La Garde Républicaine in the centre of Paris, a vast and empty space demanding the audience’s complete and unceasing attention on the linearity, choreography, and movement of the models and clothes throughout the expansive space.
As the first look appears in an overhead shot of the stairway, the camera glides with the model and a swelling orchestral sound announces the beginning of the show. Anderson’s first three looks are minimal, with a three-dimensional twist; he plays with lines and shapes in his exhibition of a long, black, sleeveless dress with metal structures protruding from beneath the fabric; creasing and manipulating the material in three heterogeneous ways each time. The rest of his looks incorporate flashy sequins, delicate chiffon, and stylised denim.Ç

Several looks make use of a golden, chrome-like material as the outfit’s centre of attraction, producing a reflective quality that makes for an intoxicating observation for the people in the audience. Extraneous from the collection, Anderson manipulates the mind with his play on parallel lines and loops; the models paths follow and cross one another in a continuous structure that employs the entirety of the space and makes for a perplexing watch.

One of the most remarkable characteristics of this season’s collection are the Loewe pumps and sandals, which have sparked a conversation all over social media, and there’s a fair reason why. The design of the sandals is inventive in the quirkiest way, with the heels being made from a different object each time, ranging from a bar of soap, a bottle of nail polish, a rose, and a candle – suggesting intricacy and femininity. It’s unusual, but it works.

Johnathan Anderson’s vision this time around was inspired by Jacopo Carucci – known as Pontormo – an Italian painter remembered for rebelling against the work of High Renaissance, to pursue his personal style of painting which is often characterised as early mannerism. In a similar fashion, Anderson is breaking away from the habitual, in his 2022 comeback, to present an, at times, seemingly simplistic collection which in actuality is something much more revolutionary and psychedelic on closer investigation.
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