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How LOEWE became one of craft’s biggest champions


14 April 2021

Under creative director Jonathan Anderson, the Spanish leather brand has drawn on its artisanal heritage to elevate the work of contemporary makers


14 April 2021

  • Crafted promotion

The making of LOEWE’s S/S 2021 Flamenco clutch bag

Fashion designer Jonathan Anderson exudes all the virtues of a craftsperson – a reverence for tradition and innovation in equal measure, a maker’s eye, and, above all else, patience. After all, when he first took the reins at Spanish luxury house LOEWE as creative director in September 2013, it took him 18 months to debut his first collection. His penchant for slow fashion, offbeat artist collaborations and the handmade has cemented the 36 year-old’s status as one of the most influential voices in the industry – and reinforced the heritage leather brand’s role as a bastion of contemporary craft.


  • LOEWE creative director Jonathan Anderson. Courtesy: LOEWE FOUNDATION

  • LOEWE’s quadruple-L insignia being stamped on its leather

In LOEWE, the designer found an immediate kinship. ‘After I’d been there six weeks, what became most important was that the house was way older than anyone still living, and that it was built on some extraordinary skills in craft and making, primarily with leather,’ he says. ‘I visited the Spanish ateliers, and was attracted by something quite genuinely sensuous and soulful that was going on there.’ Anderson began considering what real luxury was about – the answer, he realised, was the pure essence of craftsmanship woven into the fabric of LOEWE’s 175 year-old history.

A passionate collector of craft, Anderson gravitates towards 20th-century British ceramics. ‘I’d been collecting ceramics for a while when I first joined the brand,’ he says, ‘and I realised that these two positions – what LOEWE is about and my obsession for things made out of clay – really did align.’ His personal collection includes works by Lucie Rie, Lynda Benglis, Hans Coper and John Ward. ‘Of course, I’m not a ceramicist, I’m a fashion designer,’ Anderson reflects. ‘In a weird way, the greatest participation I have in the world of ceramics is how I arrange my collection. It’s taught me a lot, especially how important it is to go against the grain, or at least not entirely go with it.’


  • Pot, by Hans Coper, 1972, oxidised stoneware. Photo: Stokes Photo Ltd. Crafts Council Collection: P36

  • Bowl, Lucie Rie, 1983-84, oxidised porcelain, glazed with an American pigment. Crafts Council Collection: P344

Perhaps it was only natural that Anderson felt the call of craft: his grandfather headed up a textiles factory in his native Northern Ireland. ‘Going to the factory to see fabric being printed with my grandfather really got me into this idea of making, and the art of making,’ he told Crafts in 2018. ‘Ireland is one of those places that is very craft-oriented, so it’s almost like it’s built into you.’


Bamboo artisan Jiro Yonezawa at work in his atelier, crafting a basket for LOEWE’s 2019 Salone del Mobile exhibition in Milan

Anderson’s advocacy for craft feels more relevant than ever. As the COVID-19 pandemic persists, one of its more unexpected – if welcome – side effects has been a renaissance of the craft sector. ‘Through this entire year, the idea of craft and making has never been more crucial,’ Anderson told Vogue last year. ‘It engages with people. It shows responsibility and protection of things that people are forgetting are important. It employs people and ultimately is about the legacy that we pass from generation to generation.’


  • Japanese artist and LOEWE collaborator Arko creates one-off wall-mounted artworks from rice straw

  • LOEWE invited 11 master weavers, including Irish basketmaker Joe Hogan, to create limited-edition objets d’art for its 2019 exhibition at Salone del Mobile in Milan

LOEWE was founded in Madrid in 1846 and specialised in leather purses and handbags (the Spanish Royal family was among its clientele) before expanding its offerings to include ready-to-wear, perfumes and other fashion accessories. Under Anderson’s stewardship, the LVMH-owned brand has extended its presence beyond the runway and established itself as a mainstay at the world’s biggest design showcase, Salone del Mobile in Milan. At the fair’s last (physical) iteration in 2019, the house invited 11 master weavers, including Japanese straw artist Arko and Irish basketmaker Joe Hogan, to pay homage to Galician basketweaving with a series of limited-edition objets d’art made from LOEWE leather. More recently, LOEWE’s S/S 2021 collection – in stores now – features leather basketweaving looks by Galician textiles artisan Idoia Cuesta, a longtime collaborator of the brand.


  • Cuesta created bespoke pieces for the brand’s S/S 2021 womenswear collection. Photo: Thue Nørgaard

  • Spanish textiles artisan Idoia Cuesta is a longtime collaborator of LOEWE

Anderson launched the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize in 2016. First awarded to wood-turner Ernst Gamperl, the annual prize celebrates excellence and innovation in modern craftsmanship, and recognises artists whose talent and vision promise to set a new standard for the future. The LOEWE Foundation itself has also given invaluable support to the Collect art fair over the last four years. ‘I collect craft, I go to craft shows, craft galleries – it is an obsession of mine,’ Anderson enthuses. ‘So when I joined LOEWE I knew, of course, I was becoming the creative director, but I didn’t want to always have to talk about myself. I wanted to be able to celebrate the art of craft, the idea of making with one’s hands, but also to give it the exposure that I truly think it deserves.’


  • Surface Tactility #11, by 2019 LOEWE Craft Prize winner Genta Ishizuka, 2018, lacquer and mixed media

For LOEWE’s A/W 2021 menswear and pre-fall womenswear collections, Anderson is spotlighting the late queer artist Joe Brainard, renowned for his collages, paintings and poetry. ‘I really wanted to draw on Brainard’s flowers series because it could translate into the different mediums that we use at LOEWE – for example, hand-knit and intarsia into leather, which are very complex and difficult to do,’ Anderson explains. The result is a collection with psychedelic leanings and a splash of kitsch: think kaleidoscopic oversized knits, draped camel-wool shorts, and bags emblazoned with Brainard’s paintings of whippets. An accompanying hardbound tome, A Show in a Book, explores Anderson’s inspirations further with 200 pages devoted to Brainard’s art, comics and other ephemera. (The compendium will be available on Printed Matter from 22 June, with pre-orders from 4 May.)


  • Anderson riffed on Brainard’s flower collages for LOEWE’s A/W 2021 collection

  • LOEWE’s A/W 2021 Flamenco knot bag and homewares emblazoned with Joe Brainard’s artwork

It is this boundary-busting fusion of fashion, art and craft that has become of a hallmark of Anderson’s tenure at LOEWE. The maison’s S/S 2021 show package included a roll of special-edition wallpaper designed by artist Anthea Hamilton, and last summer LOEWE dropped a capsule collection that celebrated the colourful creations of Californian ceramicist Ken Price. Its A/W 2020 womenswear collection, meanwhile, was peppered with ceramic pendants, charms and studded bodices by Japanese artist Takuro Kuwata. In 2019 Anderson designed a capsule, ready-to-wear collection inspired by the fantastical world of British potter William de Morgan.


  • Kuwata’s studded plates were fixed into the bodices of dresses

  • LOEWE collaborated with Japanese potter Takuro Kuwata for its A/W 2020 collection

Anderson once described craft as ‘a three-dimensional antidote’ to online two-dimensional imagery, and, certainly, he has eschewed fashion’s frenzied obsession with hype and the Next Big Thing through his work with LOEWE. ‘Along the way, I’ve gained much more understanding of the relevance of craft practice today as something that transcends the waves of fashion,’ the designer adds, ‘but remains extremely useful and relevant to the world of art, design and imagination.’

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