2 March 2024 |
When he’s good, he’s very, very good. Jonathan Anderson delivered. It was a stellar Loewe show, full of inventive but covetable pieces. It was packed with ideas – every look a winner – from the long, flowing bias-cut dresses at the beginning to the pointy hemmed tail coats and ballooning trousers and army pants. Worn with crisp little blazers and flat boots they had a Chaplin-esque charm.
The models walked through an art gallery set where small landscape paintings and still lifes by the highly collectible American painter Albert York were displayed. He was a recluse, who shunned society but his paintings of simple domestic scenes were collected by the likes of Jackie Kennedy and were coveted in the smartest drawing rooms. Anderson also has one, which he put on the show invite.
The disconnect between the world of the artist and the collector got him meditating on what we collect. What has value and why? Spinning that thought out into the collection, clothes were decorated with prints of cross stitch embroideries of pets that were fashionable collectibles in the 1920s, sweat pants and biker boots had the look of floral chenille, but were encrusted with caviar beads. There was plenty to boggle the eye. A collar on a mannish city coat was cast in silver to look like fur. A huge droplet of resin acted as a shoulder strap for a draped floral mini-dress. On top of all that inventiveness, there were great clothes. Those outsized proportioned cargos, exaggerated tail coats and a curving shearling aviator jacket were stand out.
Photography by Christina Fragkou.
