Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez make a bold start at Loewe, inspired by Ellsworth Kelly’s ‘elemental colours’

Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez chose the manicured gardens of Parc Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, situated in the south of the city, to stage their debut show for Loewe, erecting a vast white box which editors and celebrity guests – including Pedro Almodóvar, Parkey Posey, Tracee Ellis Ross and Sarah Paulson – gathered in anticipation of a new era for the Spanish house.

Inside, the white-walled space was bare beyond rows of colourful tiled benches and one artwork. Hung in the show’s entranceway, the abstract masterpiece, Yellow Panel with Red Curve, was painted by Ellsworth Kelly in 1989 (and, like other celebrity attendees, came with its own pair of security guards).

The collection that followed – which had been teased prior to the show in a series of sensual, sun-soaked images by Talia Chetrit – drew upon Kelly’s hard-edge technicolour minimalism, translating it into a wardrobe that celebrated the Spanish house’s long-standing commitment to craft. ‘In [the painting] lies an optimism and spirit that we deeply identify with,’ said the pair. ‘It operates as a starting point, a prelude of sorts, to what lies ahead.’

McCollough and Hernandez, who are partners in both life and work, arrive at Loewe after stepping away from their own label, Proenza Schouler – a portmanteau of their mothers’ maiden names – earlier this year after almost two decades honing a vision of contemporary and eclectic femininity, inspired by the brand’s native city of New York (the label is in good hands: CFDA award-winning designer Rachel Scott of Diotima has stepped into the role, presenting her first collection at a New York Fashion Week last month).

Taking up the mantle of the Spanish house from Jonathan Anderson, who left his 11-year tenure to embark on a new chapter at Dior, McCollough and Hernandez faced two challenges: firstly, how two Americans might interpret the 180-year history of the Madrid-founded house, and secondly, how they might continue the vast commercial success of their predecessor, who lifted Loewe from relative obscurity into the creative behemoth it is today. To begin, they asked themselves a series of questions: ‘How might craft be redefined today? How far can one push the expression of the handmade before its very traces of making disappear? What constitutes Spanishness in 2025?’

Using the ‘chromatic intensity’ of Kelly as a guiding throughline, their answers came in a storyline of ‘clarity and colour, sensual physicality, and sunniness’. Models charged through the space to a pulsating soundtrack, opening with thigh-skimming looks that played with the house’s signature material – leather – in colour block mini dresses and mock-neck jackets so rigid that they held hourglass shapes away from the body.

The looks that followed were cut sharp and clean, seeing wardrobe staples and athletic sportswear take on a ‘sensuality and fervour’; billowing windbreakers worn with frill-edged micro shorts, straight-edge trenchcoats in fuzzy yellow and orange wools, body-clinging striped dresses and jeans worn topless with chunky knits slung on shoulders and tied over bare chests. It was all the expressive colour and texture that has come to be synonymous with Loewe, restrained in the pair's New York language of easy, eclectic cool. It made for a collection not of revolution but redirection – fans of Anderson’s Loewe will find plenty to enjoy here, but there was a fresh eye that made this astute collection their own.

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