“I’m loving daywear at the moment,” Jonathan Anderson declared after parading his spring Loewe collection around six monumental bronze sculptures by 81-year-old American artist Lynda Benglis, a sometime Loewe campaign face.
There were white jeans, Oxford shirts, blazers, polo shirts, V-neck sweaters and trim coats, but all slyly twisted by Anderson, whose brainiac approach is married to an intense commitment to craft, fashion daring, and a knack for classic colors.
All the jeans and trousers were extremely high-waisted, the main message at his men’s Loewe collection last June, into which he tucked small business or tuxedo shirts. The look fell somewhere between boyish and awkward.
There were other oddities: Long, slender knit capes with gold buttons the size of oatmeal cookies that encased the body; leather shorts with the waistband held together by a giant straight pin, and crystal-and-metal tops described in the show notes as “accumulations of sparkly brooches.”
The familiarity of many garments, and Anderson’s penchant for showing them in multiple colors, diminished the voltage of what is usually an electrifying show.
Yet the desirability and refinement of the clothes often dazzled, especially the trim, double-breasted leather and suede coats, and tiered cocktail dresses composed of delicate filaments. The bags were terrific.
Backstage, Anderson described an evolution of his design process, after delving into surrealism during the pandemic.
“I wanted something fresh,” he said. “It’s sort of about tightening, and enjoying that sort of work. I think sometimes I have a tendency of running away from a silhouette. This time, it was quite nice to kind of explore it further, which was a newer process for me.”
Anderson said he translated eccentricities plucked from Benglis’ long career and colorful life into the collection — her glitter works expressed in ballerinas, the comeback shoe of the season, for example — and also collaborated with her on fine jewelry pieces in the show.
The designer said he relates to the way Benglis plays with bad taste, and sexuality, too, urging the journalists clustered around him to Google her sculpture titled “Smile.” (Warning: It’s NSFW.)
