SUBSTANCE WAS THE ANSWER FOR LOEWE

“Substance” seemed to be keyword for Jonathan Anderson‘s spring-summer 2024 menswear collection for Loewe. The three Lynda Benglis fountains that the designer’s curatorial enthusiasm had brought together for the first time were the first clues – one was tall and looming, another an apparently kinetically charged wave mid-break, and the last low and spreading like an unpruned shrub. Splashes of water erupting from Beglis’ structures inhabited the runway space, making the Loewe show an art experience, not just a parade of clothes. But the clothes were equally transfixing as the liquid-like installations.

The garments hewn by Anderson and his team for this collection defined the shape and aspect of the moving human substance within them. By pulling the waistband of his pants up so very high, Anderson said afterwards, he wanted to create a way of seeing this collection that was akin to viewing it from ground level with a fish-eye lens. Coating some looks with crystals that glinted in the skylight sunshine invited you to see another watery parallel with Anderson’s installed artworks. When not obscured by long coats, or three hyper-sized swatches (complete with hyper-sized pins) of what looked like chintzy vintage wall upholstery fabric, that looming silhouette was generally undisturbed yet variously expressed. Sparkly polo shirts, chunky knits, argyle sweaters, trench coat shirts, and bonded gret rib knits with rounded shoulders or two-dimensional side-tabs were all cropped around the southern reaches of the wearer’s ribcage.

Three leather jumpsuits near the end, one pastel pink, latter scarlet, the last black, combined the trouser shape with the upholstery facade into a hybridised silhouette. “It’s always about trying to find contradictions in men and women: like how do you blur all of that? I feel like something in this is very precise in that message, it’s very reduced, very luxe”, Anderson said backstage.