Loewe Ready-to-Wear SS22

After the pandemic, Jonathan Anderson returned to experiment with Loewe, walking on paths not yet beaten. “I think it’s a moment of experimentation. If you’re going to reset after this period, you need to allow a moment to birth a new aesthetic. Start again”.

And with these words, Loewe’s spring-summer 2022 collection opens. It starts with pretty minimal black dresses, then reinterpreted in other colors. The tube design is however “disturbed” by a geometric metal installation in 3D.

“I wanted the collection to be hysterical,” he stated. “So that there’s a tension. Because this is a strange moment.” So yes, the main idea is to start again with a new aesthetic but also to remember the moment passed and the current one, by bringing that strangeness experienced in a not too distant past even on clothes. This hysterical effect and the disturbing sensation, are insisting in this idea. The installations continue, in silver and gold, on the stomach or on the hips.

The inspiration comes in part from the Deposition by Jacopo Pontormo, painted in 1528 in Florence. What fascinates Anderson is the “hysteria” of forms, of characters.

Taffeta, chiffon on a pastel color palette, alternated with the more classic one of red, black and white, the collection seems not to have much sense, but it’s just in this lack it finds an explanation.

Particularly noteworthy are the jersey pieces combined with gold breastplates, perhaps reminiscent of the works of Claude Lalanne for Saint Laurent in the 1960s. The collection continues with chiffon balloon pants, and tracksuits revisited with taffeta.

Jonathan Anderson has certainly changed direction compared to the collections seen so far, and we can only remain enthusiastic, especially in the face of a work of experimentation so successful that it does not cancel or stifle the past, indeed admits the strangeness and confusion, taking it on the catwalk.