Loewe highs? Jonathan Anderson looks back on an epic decade: the creative director talks art, inspiration and the ‘Crafted World’ exhibition celebrating 10 years of fashion reinvention

STORYVincenzo La Torre

Apr 12 , 2024

00:27

Style Cover: Loewe

Fashion

The Northern Irishman founded his own London-based JW Anderson label before joining Loewe in 2014 – reinventing the label as one of LVMH’s top brands, often ranked in the Lyst Index top three

Once the official purveyor to the Royal Household of Spain and known for its Puzzle bag, under Anderson Loewe has entered a new era, collaborating with trainer label On and scoring red-carpet endorsements from Rihanna and Zendaya

The roots of leather goods house Loewe might date back to 1846, but to modern-day luxury consumers – fans of the label’s signature Puzzle bag, summer-ready raffia totes and strikingly shaped scented candles – the brand truly came to the fore just a decade ago.

Not coincidentally, that’s when a then-little-known Northern Irish designer unveiled his first collection for the LVMH-owned house. His name, of course, was Jonathan Anderson – founder of London-based JW Anderson.

Loewe autumn/winter 2024 collection, shown in Paris in March

Before Anderson’s arrival, Loewe had long been known for its Spanish heritage – the maison had been an official purveyor to the Royal Household of Spain – and its Amazona and Flamenco bags, but lacked a cohesive visual identity. Outside Spain, it could be found in a few other countries in Europe and Asia – notably Japan – but the label had little to no presence in key markets such as the US or China. It was a sleeping beauty waiting to be awakened, and Anderson was the one to bring it back to life and give it a much needed dose of energy.

“I’ll never forget the first show I did. It was the first big job that I had, at the Unesco [headquarters in Paris], and it was very interesting to do this thing that I never dreamed I’d be able to do for this giant group. And looking at it now, I stand by that collection,” Anderson tells Style during a recent visit to Shanghai. “It was an exciting moment. When I took over Loewe nobody thought it was going to work and I remember that moment quite fondly.”

The brand was incredibly tiny when I joined and a lot of people probably thought that this was never going to work … I feel I’ve done my job and it was what Loewe needed

The 39-year-old designer is in China’s fashion hub for the unveiling of “Crafted World”, an exhibition charting the history of Loewe, and celebrating his remarkable 10-year run at the house. After closing in Shanghai in early May, the show will make stops around the world. Given the setting, he was in a nostalgic mood and a bit emotional at the prospect of presenting the world his work for a brand that is now so closely associated with his own creative prowess, and called working on the exhibition, conceived in collaboration with Dutch architecture firm OMA, “cathartic”.

“When you’re at a brand for 10 years and the brand has been around since 1846, it’s very easy to forget what you were doing, and this is a very important chance to understand all the things that I had picked up at the very beginning and all the things that had influenced me at the brand,” says Anderson. “Are they still relevant today?”