Words By Velin

When Jonathan Anderson stepped into Loewe in 2013, he didn’t just inherit a Spanish leather house, he inherited a blank canvas. What he created in the years since isn’t just a fashion label with strong design. It’s something closer to an institution of ideas, where clothing is only one expression of a broader artistic dialogue.

At the core of Anderson’s Loewe is not just style it’s art. Not as inspiration, not as moodboard fodder, but as a deep, structured language that guides everything. For Anderson, art is both method and message. He doesn't decorate fashion with it he builds fashion through it.

From the beginning, he treated Loewe like a museum as much as a maison. He revived the brand not with nostalgia or rebranding gimmicks, but by embedding it in the world of fine art, sculpture, ceramics, architecture, and design. Each collection feels like a curated exhibition, each campaign a study in composition and atmosphere.

His references aren’t shallow name-drops, they’re studied, precise, and emotionally resonant. He’s pulled from the surrealism of Salvador Dalí, the raw elegance of Lucie Rie’s ceramics, the structural tension of modernist sculpture, and even the humble irregularity of folk art. These aren’t just influences, they’re collaborators in spirit.

Anderson’s runway shows often feel like installations. In one, models walked over cracked marble floors reminiscent of a ruined Roman bath; in another, they appeared as if suspended in a mirrored space, becoming part of a live sculpture. His vision is always bigger than the clothes, it’s about creating a moment, a pause, an atmosphere that feels like entering an art piece.

Under Anderson, Loewe became a brand that collects, champions, and commissions art. The Loewe Craft Prize. launched in 2016 wasn’t a branding stunt; it was a serious initiative to celebrate global artisans, from textile artists in Kyoto to potters in rural France. This emphasis on process and touch on the handmade became part of the clothing itself. Raffia dresses that echo basketry, knitwear that feels like canvas, leather treated like sculpted clay. It’s fashion that feels like it was made in a studio, not a factory.

Campaigns, often photographed by Steven Meisel, take on the feel of archival art books. They nod to classical portraiture, 70s cinema, and surrealist mise-en-scène. Models don’t sell clothes they exist inside concepts. One season might feel like a Godard film still; another, a photo from a forgotten European art journal. It’s all intentional. Anderson uses imagery the way a curator uses walls. What makes his approach radical is that he never treats art as a reference point to make fashion look smart. He sees them as equals. He positions Loewe not in the trend cycle, but in the culture cycle.

By entwining his collections with ceramics, painting, and sculpture not just metaphorically, but materially Jonathan Anderson made Loewe the most artistically driven fashion house of the past decade. His work reminds us that fashion can still carry ideas. It can be slow, strange, searching and it can still sell out.

In an industry obsessed with speed and surface, Anderson’s Loewe is a quiet manifesto. But as he steps into his new role at Dior, one can’t help but wonder: will he carry this language of abstraction and artistic rigor with him, or rewrite the codes entirely?