Jonathan Anderson’s latest womenswear collection for Loewe continues his exploration and play on silhouettes. With a keen focus on the outline and playful manipulation of sections and proportions, Anderson offers a stringent yet pragmatic selection of daywear essentials.
The collection features an array of pieces, including blazers, coats, blouses, v-neck jumpers, cardigans, jeans, and trousers. The designs embrace a sense of elongation, with long legs and high-moving waists complemented by compact busts. Pockets and slits allow for dynamic postures, enabling the items to be defined by gestures.
The exploration of tension and sensuality is a recurring theme throughout the collection with short chunky jumpers, long capes that envelope the body, and dilated pullovers that gracefully flow around the wearer. Leather plays a role as a tailored outer skin, featuring sleek coats that could be flipped under the arm like a bag, as well as T-shirts and shorts with chewed hems.
Unexpected elements add an element of surprise to the designs. Tops resemble accumulations of sparkly brooches, delicate feathers, and oversized pins that serve as closures. The colour palette of the collection is predominantly muted, with camel, grey, brown, and black tones gracefully punctuated by accents of red, bougainvillea, and tangerine.
Footwear offerings include round-toe shoe silhouettes, pointy mules, ergonomic shoes, and schoolboy-inspired designs. Buckles are playfully scaled down or blown up to create eye-catching details. The handcrafted bags, made from butter-soft leathers, provide sumptuous fluidity to the reductionist aesthetic. The Squeeze bag, featuring a delightfully squishy handle, is meticulously crafted in mellow nappa leather. The Pebble Bucket, adorned with distinctive pebble-shaped hardware, is available in smooth and soft grained calf leather, offering different attitudes through mini and medium sizes.
What sets this Loewe show apart is its collaboration with artist Lynda Benglis. Benglis, a revered figure in postwar American sculpture, has consistently pushed the boundaries of form and materiality throughout her illustrious six-decade career. Her sculptures, created with diverse materials such as polyurethane, latex, sparkles, paper, plaster, bronze, and water, challenge conventional notions of what sculpture can be. Her sculptures, displayed alongside the fashion pieces, redefined the show’s setting.
For the runway presentation, six large-scale bronze sculptures were carefully selected. These works were enlarged and cast from a series of clay sculptures known as the Elephant Necklace. Benglis manipulated soft clay into dynamic forms, comparing her process to a dance. Through enlargement, the marks and imprints of this process became viscerally exaggerated. The sculptures showcased a range of surfaces, from polished bronze to matte black patina, each reflecting light in distinct ways and creating a captivating visual landscape.
