Given the soap plot speed of hirings and firings, movings and shakings at Important Fashion Houses right now, you might be surprised by the noise surrounding Jonathan Anderson’s exit from Loewe (and his widely-reported, but not actually announced, next move to one of the Most Important Of All) this week. But the tributes, round-ups and copious imagery are as understandable as they are warranted – Anderson is a transcendent talent, who has, in a little over a decade at the LVMH-owned house, rewired the way many of us dress today.
Still, in the context of all that commotion, it is both pertinent and ironic that the question he posed in Loewe’s SS25 collection was: ‘What happens when one takes all the noise away?’
FIND OUT MORE ON ELLE COLLECTIVE
Read Next
That Loewe show – Anderson’s final for the house – meditated on the idea of ‘radical reduction’ and ‘commanding attention, without shouting for space’. My ninth as a guest (and one which I happily made the pilgrimage for at my own expense), I cried. Good tears, mind. It was beautiful, thoughtful. Don’t you find it deeply moving to see someone operating at the full power and what they can evoke through art?
Held in a cavernous, sparse white space at the Château de Vincennes, presided over by nothing more than a Tracey Emin bronze of a diminutive bird perched on a post, it was a triumphant almost-closing act that took in bouncy crinoline dresses, teeny-weeny minis, high-top sneakers, sequins, shells and feathered tops painted with paintings of or by Mozart, Manet, Van Gogh.
That is the kind of impossible-to-predict line-up that defined Anderson’s Loewe and which is just one of the tells of his quick, eager mind. His designs intrigue, inspire, surprise, provoke, delight. Anderson’s clothes are for people who both assert opinions and ask questions. People who, like him, are deeply curious.
He is, you can tell, greedy to learn, with a curative sensibility; the owner of a nimble mind that can leap from reference to reference with the vim and speed of a kid on a trampoline (Studio Ghibli animations and diminutive landscapes of Albert York, dadaism and William Morris. Just a taster!). Released next week, a new monograph, Crafted World: Jonathan Anderson’s LOEWE, surveys the breadth of his time there.
Zadie Smith provides the forward to the tome. She sat on the front row of that final Loewe show, alongside the likes of Hollywood cool-girls Ayo Edebiri and Greta Lee, director and collaborator Luca Guadagnino, Meg Ryan and industry peers, such as the Givenchy creative director Sarah Burton. Anderson’s approach to celebrity is clever, an exchange (imagine what he could, hypothetically, do with a house known with form dressing First Ladies and royals). His touch can help elevate young stars, like Taylor Russell, Drew Starkey or Josh O’Connor; it says ‘hey, this person is interesting. Pay attention!’. But he also spotlights those who are typically behind-the-scenes, such as the artist Rose Wylie or the Hollywood exec Sue Kroll, and reframes those we know and love and well: see Dame Maggie Smith getting the Juergen Teller treatment, or Jamie Dornan and Daniel Craig discovering their more outré tastes. To get thoroughbred hunks like them into lens-shifting pieces was to propose a more nuanced type of masculinity, and most of the best visual rejections of the Andrew Tate sensibility I have seen.
One of the things I love most about Anderson’s work, both at Loewe and his own brand, is that he doesn’t seem to distinguish between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. In his world craft and celebrity are given equal billing. In turn he never patronised the wearer. I think it was very democratic, very optimistic brand in that sense. The cerebral, artistic, intellectual, challenging was never dialled down, nor was it overpowering. Anderson sees the best in his wearer in that sense.
Although it is fashion that comes with a heft of footnotes if desired – references and techniques to be explored – the intellect and integrity co-existed with a nous for creating clothes, shoes and bags that people don’t just desire, but also buy. You don't get the enormous gig that is reportedly his without knowing how to shift product (see the logo vests, the baskets, and the still-going-gangbusters Puzzle bag?). That’s clever.
I am just a few months younger than Anderson, who turned 40 in September. I wonder if his uncategorisable cultural perspective comes from being of that last generation to come of age without the Internet and falling down a wormhole into one sole interest was not as easy. It existed, sure, but life was not so relentlessly online in the way it is now. His approach seems to defy algorithm.
Furthermore, having grown up in parallel streams of the same industry (I am very much still splashing in the shallows, unlike Anderson) I remember those nascent days of his own-label JW Anderson, all the fuss about men in frilly shorts. He should serve as a reminder why we must nurture the talent that springs out of London. Look! What! They! Can! Do!
And as for what’s next? Even if we do all think know, we don’t know anything. Surely that is the lesson with Anderson, the singular beauty of what he does. Expand your horizons, defy your expectations. Learn, be curious! As it said in the show notes of that SS25 collection: ‘The invitation to second guess is constant’.
ELLE Collective is a new community of fashion, beauty and culture lovers. For access to exclusive content, events, inspiring advice from our Editors and industry experts, as well the opportunity to meet designers, thought-leaders and stylists, become a member today HERE.
