The Loewe Spring/Summer 2024 collection is a fusion of artistry and a masterful understanding of the human form. This latest offering from the design house, under the visionary leadership of Jonathan Anderson, takes its inspiration from an unlikely source – the powerful ebb and flow of water, personified by Lynda Benglis’ striking fountains.
The synergy between fashion and art is as old as the craft itself. Yet, when Jonathan Anderson curated Loewe‘s Spring/Summer 2024 show around three of Lynda Benglis’ fountains, he managed to refresh this long-standing romance. These masterpieces – tall and domineering, kinetic and tempestuous, low and sprawling – embodied the intriguing interplay between nature’s fluidity and man’s attempts to shape it, a theme that resonates through the collection.
In each piece, Anderson and his team sculpted wearable art that mirrored the motion of water confined within Benglis’ structures. Their pieces shaped the wearer as the fountains shaped the water, creating an optical illusion that recalled the towering columns of dimpled cones from Benglis’ fountains. Anderson‘s decision to hoist trouser waistbands skywards isn’t merely sartorial – it’s about reorienting the viewer’s perspective, akin to the ground-level, fish-eye view of a towering edifice.
Anderson’s keen understanding of light adds another layer to this watery narrative. Outfits coated with shimmering crystals twinkled in the daylight, mimicking sunlight dancing on a water surface. The garments stood as striking tributes to Anderson’s curated installations, embodying the visual and emotional depth of both the art and the artist.
Anderson’s fashion language isn’t a shout; it’s a whisper. It’s in the subtle, “looming” silhouette echoed throughout the collection, be it beneath long, technically complex herringbone coats or hidden behind oversized swatches that hinted at a nostalgic chintz wall upholstery. The silhouette is adaptable, finding expression in sparkly polo shirts, chunky knits, argyle sweaters, trench coat shirts, and bonded gray rib knits with rounded shoulders or two-dimensional side tabs.
A high point of this show came with the unveiling of two leather jumpsuits, one a daring scarlet, the other a somber black. These pieces combined the signature high-rise trouser shape with the nostalgic upholstery facade into a hybrid silhouette – a testament to Anderson’s mastery of blending the old and the new.
Reflecting on the collection, Anderson said, “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”. His designs are devoid of literal identifiers, yet they bear a distinct, unmistakable imprint, a hallmark of the Anderson aesthetic.
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