In 1951, photographer Bob Mizer published the first issue of his quarterly magazine, Physique Pictorial. Posing as a bodybuilding guide, to comply with the strict obscenity laws of the time, Mizer’s richly illustrated production was one of the first aimed at a gay, male audience.

Inside, photographs of male bodybuilders were presented as artworks, rooted in realism, with each image accompanied by the corresponding model’s real name, age and vital statistics. An eclectic cultural canon launched the careers of artists and celebrities, including Tom of Finland, whose first drawings were published in Physique Pictorial’s pages, and George Quaintance and Dom Orejudos, whose work sat alongside early photographs of model and actor Joe Dallesandro and fitness coach Jack LaLanne.

The magazine, which ran for 39 years, has left a lasting impact, with artists including David Hockney and Robert Mapplethorpe citing it as an inspiration for their own work. In its celebration of the male body from a pop culture niche, it quietly and defiantly normalised a sensual male beauty.

Now, JW Anderson is the latest to pay homage, presenting an exhibition, ‘Spartacus,’ at his Soho, London store. The name is taken from the chosen pseudonym of the magazine’s illustrator, who was required to adopt a false identity – their true identity remains unknown.

JW Anderson has chosen 40 of Spartacus’ works, once privately owned by Mizer, and now able to view throughout the rest of Pride Month, up to 6th July.

JW Anderson presents: ‘Spartacus, Bob Mizer’s Pictorial Physique’ at the Soho, London boutique until 6 July

Paris Fashion Week culminated yesterday, marking the end of a month-long season of shows that has seen previous stops in New York, London and Milan.

With a nine-day schedule standing at nearly double the length of its counterparts, Paris remains the defining city of fashion month – not least because it comprises shows from fashion’s heavyweight houses, among them Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent (to name just a handful).

After last season’s debuts dominated the S/S headlines, A/W 2026 was about the sophomore show, as designers settled into their positions as creative directors. Without the weight of expectation, we saw some brilliant shows – notably Jonathan Anderson at Dior, Michael Rider at Celine, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe, and Matthieu Blazy at Chanel (all were showing their second ready-to-wear collections).

Here, reported by Wallpaper* fashion & beauty features director Jack Moss and contributing writer India Jarvis, we pick the standout shows that defined the week.

The best of Paris Fashion Week A/W 2026

Dior

Jonathan Anderson staged his A/W 2026 runway show for Dior in Paris’ Jardin des Tuileries, constructing a circular show set around one of the park’s ponds (for the occasion, it had been populated with Monet-esque lily pads, meticulously constructed to look like the real thing), while the invitation comprised miniature versions of the park’s signature green metal chairs. Across the pond’s centre ran an elevated runway, echoing the line of the Tuileries’ Grand Allée, a historic promenade since the park opened to the public in 1667 after a renovation by Louis XIV. It led to a collection about ‘seeing and being seen’, a contemporary imagining of the promenade, ‘[where] a walk in the park becomes a performance’. Cue a ‘panoply of Parisians’ in eclectic, time-hopping attire, from the woozy ruffles of the Belle Époque (here transformed into mini dresses with bouncing trains) to plays on bourgeois tropes, such as fabrics that recalled heritage tweeds, blazers with golden buttons, and shearling jackets reimagined with wave-like hems. What was most striking, though, was a feeling of levity: lily-pad-adorned footwear, polka-dot motifs and crystallised denim were both playful and pretty. ‘Dior has this giant past, and I had to start there,’ Anderson said. ‘Now I feel free to release it from that.’ Jack Moss

READ: Jonathan Anderson’s latest Dior show was a walk in the park

Saint Laurent

A cinematic offering from Anthony Vaccarello unfolded in a simulacrum of a sleek, modernist home; at its centre, a sized-up recreation of a bust that lived in Yves Saint Laurent’s own apartment. Through it strode this season’s Saint Laurent heroine, her heavy-smoked eye and slick, side-parted hair a nod towards Helmut Newton’s Paris Vogue photograph of a model in Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘Le Smoking’ tuxedo on Rue Aubriot in 1975. Indeed, tailoring was central to the A/W 2026 collection: eight trouser suits opened the show, while various other iterations appeared throughout (including Vaccarello’s own riff on the tuxedo, worn by model Loli Bahia, who walked exclusively for Saint Laurent this season and closed the show). Here, the silhouette was sloped across the shoulder and narrowed at the waist – though not constricted – for a riff on the power suit that was more ‘insouciant shrug than swagger’. As a counterpoint, Vaccarello looked towards the ‘troubled heroines’ of Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams, as well as Romy Schneider in the 1971 film Max et les Ferrailleurs (she was this season’s protagonist, he said), to capture an ‘elegance tinged with ennui… the beauty of intimacy and vulnerability’. To capture this mood, a series of slips and dresses came in lace coated in silicone, while enormous fur coats had a vivacious confidence. Jack Moss

Dries Van Noten

For many of us, the stylings of awkward adolescence are best not dwelt upon – after all, who looked or felt their best as a teenager? Evidently, Julian Klausner takes a more romantic view of this impressionable time, but, then again, Klausner was likely a more sophisticated brand of teenager than most. In any case, this was the impression given by his A/W 2026 collection for Dries Van Noten, which was inspired in part by a visit to Lycée Carnot, and the memories of being an adolescent ‘work-in-progress’. The Lycée is a Rive Droite public school with alumni including Gilles Deleuze, Guy Debord, and Daft Punk, and its Gustave Eiffel-designed great hall has been the backdrop for numerous Paris fashion shows over the years – in other words, a suitably rarefied and creatively rich starting point.

The 61 looks at Dries Van Noten asked that most teenage question: who am I going to be today? For the confident moment, a navel-bearing button-up knit with a vibrant silk skirt. When a suit of armour is required, a protective duffel coat that does the talking for you. Or maybe one day the mood might be scholastic – collegiate blazer and pleated skirt, but always, always customised, an embellishment here, a contrasting trim there. ‘Just like a pixelated picture, the more one gets far from that time of endless questioning, the clearer it becomes,’ Klausner said, a metaphor he extended through prints with digitally warped 17th-century Flemish still life paintings. Opulent, mature fabrics and finishings were styled with a youthful irreverence best summarised by the final lines from Gala Dragot’s vocal performance, which soundtracked the show: ‘Don’t be too serious... Wear a collar... Keep it blurry though.’ India Jarvis

Acne Studios

If Dries Van Noten was an homage to the experimental attitude of youth, then Acne Studios marked its 30th birthday year with a collection that declared (as one does at 30): I know exactly who I am. A/W 2026 was an affirmation of the house’s irreverent signatures, such as a revival of the particular 1996 cut of jean that made their name, and photographic elements that nod to the brand’s unconventional marketing style, including the bi-annual Acne Paper.

The setting for this season was a succession of intersecting cuboid rooms that, viewed simultaneously from the end of the runway, appeared like a Josef Albers work made three-dimensional. According to Jonny Johansson’s show notes, this was conceived ‘like an enfilade of salons … the portals marking what has come before, and what might follow’. Where a salon in the Parisian tradition might mean a bringing together of clashing or complementary ideas, at Acne Studios, the determination is to blur those boundaries as much as possible. Standout looks saw cropped aviator jackets worn with skin-tight jodhpurs and desirable point-toe pumps, Prince of Wales check jackets worn over one shoulder, and larger-than-life portraits of art school students, taken by Paul Kooiker, printed onto stiff pencil skirts and draped dresses.

Alaïa

Late last year, just after the completion of the Italian house’s sale to Prada, it was announced that Dario Vitale would be leaving his position as creative director of Versace (he lasted a single, but impactful season), to be replaced by Belgian designer Pieter Mulier. It meant that this season’s Alaïa show, watched by designers Matthieu Blazy and Raf Simons, was to be his last: the swansong of a five-year tenure defined by commercial expansion and critical success (he has also established a coterie of model muses, many of whom walked this final show, and will likely follow him to Versace). Held in an intimate showspace in the former Fondation Cartier – Mulier said he wanted it to recall a 1990s pre-iPhone runway show – the collection itself eschewed his more recent experimental silhouettes in favour of stripping things back to the essence of the house, from simple body-contouring tank dresses to lean tailored overcoats, stretch knits, and peplums and ruffles (the last flourishes rendered in Mulier’s contemporary, streamlined style).

‘This collection is about clothes to wear. What is a jacket? What is a dress?’ he said backstage after the show. ‘It’s basically a vocabulary of the last five years. It’s what I learned at Alaïa, that I’m giving to the next designer. It’s like leaving the keys on the table. At Alaïa, I learned precision, editing and [that] real luxury is not what we all think. It is a perfectly cut jacket.’ Jack Moss

READ: Pieter Mulier delivers a swansong collection at Alaïa: ‘It is a vocabulary of the last five years’

Rabanne

Of all the distinct fashions of the long 20th century, it could be argued that 1940s style is the hardest to reference without veering into the territory of costume. Perhaps it’s because boxy tailored silhouettes and victory rolls are so much associated with the vast canon of British war movies, or perhaps because austerity-driven ‘make do’ dressing is antithetical to contemporary fashion at either end of the high-low scale. It’s a testament to Julien Dossena’s eye, then, that for Rabanne A/W 2026 he incorporated patently 1940s-inspired styles – T-bar heels, tea-dress florals, and clashing knitwear – without evoking even a hint of reenactment.

After all, Rabanne has always been a house noted for its futuristic bent. Unconventional, industrial materials, like metal and plastic, are at its very heart, and remained so this season alongside those more vintage ideas – coming together in a collection that the brand called ‘a little louche’. This take on modernist femininity was told through blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpses of a slip through an unbuttoned blouse, a hint of lace underneath a more conservative skirt, and pussybows left suggestively undone. Dossena told Wallpaper* post-show that the character he wanted to build with these contrasts was that of ‘a resistant woman’, and that for him, there was a suggestion of retro-futurism with the 1940s-derived shapes (for example, hair pulled into sculptural pompadour styles was less Vera Lynn and more replicants in Blade Runner). India Jarvis

Rick Owens

What might the cyberpunk cousin of Marlene Dietrich wear for a night on the town? It’s a question that could only be answered by Rick Owens – whose A/W 2026 collection was an homage to the ‘dignified sequence of her life stages’, all shot through with classics from his own particular design language. Think body parts augmented through prosthetics and sci-fi silhouettes in a post-apocalyptic landscape heavy with dry ice and punctuated by magnesium-bright beams of light. Presenting the collection as the second part of ‘Tower’, which premiered during the men's collections, Owens drew from Dietrich’s qualities of ‘steeliness’ and ‘grit’, and interpreted them as sheath-like dresses, abundant piles of faux fur, and flight jackets.

Just as the German star’s enduring legacy was in part a product of her striking collaborations with Josef von Sternberg, Owens is an artist quick to credit the rich input his work receives from his creative partners. This season, much attention has been lovingly devoted to name-checking the hands through which his raw materials pass – from the third-generation, family-run mill in Como, Italy, which weaves a high-performance fibre called Kevlar (purportedly five-times stronger than steel), to the Veneto-region wash house committed to reducing water waste, which treats industrial indigo canvas. India Jarvis

Loewe

Presented on a bright-yellow runway populated by German artist Cosima Von Bonin’s plush figures of clams, octopi and dogs, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s sophomore Loewe collection was a welcome jolt of energy on the Friday morning of Paris Fashion Week. ‘What is fashion but an open field for endless creative play?’ said the American designers, whose poppy A/W 2026 collection translated their colourful beach-ready debut for the winter months, resulting in a riot of curvy dégradé shearling parkas, 3D-printed slips and shaggy-hemmed dresses with trailing trains. Other elements had a sporting feel – like face-shielding sunglasses, boldly coloured anoraks and chunky riffs on half-zip ski sweaters – while inflatable elements meant garments could be transformed in size and proportion (a lobster-claw-shaped pump, shown at the re-see the following day, will be sold separately).

Such experiments were made possible by the abilities of the Loewe atelier, particularly when it came to leather: bouclé overcoats were made from intricate loops of leather yarn, while the gradient shearlings were treated ‘in the same manner as poodle grooming’. ‘As we began [creating] our second collection, we were struck by a simple truth: for us, the act of making is, at its core, an expression of joy – an intellectual, process-driven pursuit charged with playfulness,’ said the designers. ‘The path taken matters as much as the end result. It is the idea of play as rigorous experimentation and problem-solving, moving between instinct and experience, between a devotion to craft and its endless opportunities for innovation.’ Jack Moss

Issey Miyake

For Satoshi Kondo, the role of designer is as much about relinquishing control as it is wielding it. Knowing when to hold back, not to overstep the mark, to let the materials speak for themselves. This was the credo he brought to the fore for Issey Miyake’s A/W 2026 offering – a characteristically Japanese recognition of innate, simple beauty.

Titled ‘Creating, Allowing’, the collection navigated this specific tension understood by designers through pieces where the artist’s hand was inserted sparingly, never tampering with the true essence of the fabrication, only enhancing. At its best, this looked like expanses of cloth cut with technical lines that left their impression on the negative space, like the wine-coloured single-breasted coat with inbuilt cape that the model held up over her shoulders to exaggerate its rectangular construction. The innate movement of the house-signature pleats was used only intermittently and, instead, dramatically inflexible lacquered washi paper was introduced through breast plates, bodices and belts – creating a contrast between motion and restriction. Kondo’s intention with this was that the most important impact was made through the human frame, by ‘minimising design intervention and leaving the form-making to the wearer's own body’.

As for the space itself, the Carrousel du Louvre was transformed with a layer of silvery sand and ‘finely shredded aluminum foil, [serving] as a device for the interaction between "material", "people", and "clothing"’. This surface became marked and patterned as the models moved across it, another allusion to Kondo’s metaphor of ‘considered disruption’. India Jarvis

Lanvin

This year marks the centenary of menswear at the house of Lanvin – a celebration that filtered into the season’s womenswear outing through nods to the boyish silhouettes that characterised interwar ladies’ fashion. It was a time when overtly feminine curves were flattened into straight lines from bust to waist, creating an elongated, athletic outline that came to epitomise the emancipated New Woman.

Peter Copping, who took the reins at Lanvin in late 2024, imagined ‘a dialogue between generations’, which came together beautifully to meld the concerns of Jeanne Lanvin’s customers in the 1920s with those who shop the brand in the present. What do they have in common? Evidently, a love of opera – gloves were cuffed and elbow-length, and belted opera coats were voluminous enough to be worn over an evening gown, and trimmed with faux fur. They wear hats (Jeanne Lanvin’s first foray into fashion was as an apprentice milliner), with A/W 2026’s borrowing from cloche shapes but with exaggerated sou’wester-style brims. They favour a dash of restrained glamour. If some of the cuts leaned slightly austere, they were countered with an opulence of fabric and finish: hand-embroidered bead droplets, inky velvets, laser-cut fringes.

Lanvin is the oldest French maison still in operation, its HQ still in its original site – therefore, the weight of its legacy must hang heavily over every designer who takes its helm. Its founder insisted on le chic ultime, a phrase that surely needs no translation, and which is no small order. It is a comfort that, for every moment of reinvention it undergoes, Lanvin is still a place that women can go to for guaranteed elegance. India Jarvis

Givenchy

The idea of individual style was a throughline of Paris Fashion Week, one expressed by Sarah Burton with her third collection for Givenchy – the former Alexander McQueen designer’s most liberated outing yet (and, as a result, her best). ‘How can we put ourselves back together in the world we’re living in?’ was the question Burton asked this season, elucidating after the show that she was thinking about the multiplicities of a contemporary woman’s life (as such, it found a companion with the Prada show in Milan, where Miuccia Prada asserted that ‘as a woman, your life is layered – each day demands not only a shifting of clothes, but a richness of identities within yourself’). So there was some typically brilliant tailoring (Burton is known for her prowess in the medium, and has recently brought over her tailoring team from Alexander McQueen), though also more vivid expressions of style – a dress, hanging from razor-thin straps, in bright yellow leather; shimmering leopard spots that burst into tassels; silk T-shirts that had been refashioned by Stephen Jones into headpieces – as well as oversized riffs on carpenter jeans, off-the-shoulder bombers, and high-collared white shirts. ‘I wanted to make it feel very personal,’ said Burton. ‘Each woman is her own person, each silhouette is her own character.’ Jack Moss

Junya Watanabe

Junya Watanabe lets the clothes do the talking. The A/W 2026 collection was accompanied by show notes that came to two single sentences: ‘The Art of Assemblage Couture explores form born from pure creative instinct, free from conventional notions of dressmaking. Through the direct presentation of raw materials, this approach expresses the surrounding social environment.’ This succinct summary belied a frenzy of ideas, which played out over one of the most entertaining shows of the week.

Classic couture silhouettes were fashioned from a mish-mash of consumer goods and mass-produced garments. The opening look, worn by Irina Shayk, comprised a gown in a 1950s prom style, constructed from gloves, with a mesh flounce. A puff-sleeved dress, with a squared neckline and a central slit that showed a silver interior, appeared to be made from a gold Mylar blanket – its creased folds still visible, like it had just been ripped from its packet. Another dress used kitschily patterned curtains, pinch pleats and all, for its full, trained skirt, while its bodice was made from – what else? – scrap number plates.

So far, so Watanabe, but this season offered more in the way of spectacle than just unconventional materials. In a more choreographed display than usual, Watanabe called in the services of Poland-born movement director Pat Boguslawski. He directed a languid yet melodramatic routine for Watanabe’s models, who threw garments onto chairs with tango-inspired passion, and turned their heads with the kind of simpering doe-eyed expressiveness of silent movie starlets. This reference was reinforced through Eugene Souleiman’s hair design, sculpted curls slicked to the foreheads and cheeks in the manner of Josephine Baker, and glam make-up by Isamaya Ffrench – winged, heavy-lashed and sometimes tear-streaked eyes. India Jarvis

Celine

It hasn’t taken long for Michael Rider to define a signature look at Celine: a preppy, uptown-inflected uniform that feels like a vision of Parisian style through American eyes (Rider had worked at Celine previously, under Phoebe Philo, though more recently headed up US label Polo Ralph Lauren). And it has worked: his collections thus far have felt like you could wear them off the runway and straight onto the street, full of clever riffs on quotidian pieces that will no doubt be much copied by lesser brands (they have also been full of great accessories, from abundant charm bracelets to colourful handbags and slipper-like loafers). For A/W 2026, Rider continued his upward trajectory with a show held at the Institut de France amid a series of beautiful modernist speakers in wood and metal, presenting a collection that favoured perennial style over ephemeral trends. ‘Celine is a style: a mix of old and new that feels urgent and dreamy,’ said Rider. ‘Making the things we all dream of finding and wearing.’ And in among this ready-to-wear wardrobe (in the truest sense), flourishes of the playful and the romantic emerged, from enormous sequins and flashes of animal print to feathered headpieces and bold punctuations of colour. ‘Putting on clothes, a look, can change the day – [it can] change how we walk and feel,’ said Rider. ‘I love that.’ Jack Moss

Hermès

Staged on a runway of moss and soil (strangely, a trend of the week, later seen at Miu Miu and Louis Vuitton), Nadège Vanhée’s latest outing for Hermès saw her conjure what she called a ‘liminal realm’ between dawn and dusk, earth and space. It lent the collection an alien, otherworldly feel: models emerged from glowing orbs and looped around the Garde Républicaine show space on an inky runway, which also inspired the clothing’s palette of deep blues, greys and black. Mashing up the equestrian codes that remain at the heart of Hermès – here, sliced-away jodhpurs-cum-cycling shorts, dressage blazers and knee-high leather boots – with lean, futuristic silhouettes, it was a clever hybrid of the past, present and future, a liminal realm of Vanhée’s own. Ostrich and leather jump suits, with contrasting knit sleeves, were the season’s show pieces – the result of the house’s superlative leather atelier, they straddled sex appeal and function – while visible zips added an almost sci-fi feel, running down the front of dresses or slicing across the chest of a jacket. Prints came via AM Cassandre, an art deco artist, and saw clouds intersected by a geometric structure – a reflection of Vanhée’s own juxtapositions between the graphic and the elemental. Jack Moss

Comme des Garçons

A strong Comme des Garçons collection saw Rei Kawakubo find solace in her favoured colour, black, which – save for a brief interlude in bright, candy pink – made up the majority of the A/W 2026 collection. And, while recent collections have seen Kawakubo grapple with tumultuous world affairs, the choice of the colour was not necessarily to represent grief or mourning – instead, the Japanese designer said it captured the expansiveness of the creative process. ‘I have come to realise that, after all, black is the colour for me,’ she said in a typically brief statement issued to the press. ‘It’s just the strongest, the best for creation, and the colour that embodies the rebellious spirit. And has the biggest meaning: the universe and the black hole.’ Indeed, the use of a single colour allowed Kawakubo’s typically provocative forms to come to the fore: this season, pillow-like constructions draped in semi-sheer black tulle, undulating pile-ups of shirred ruffles and tassels, or saucer-shaped protusions that looped around the upper body. Like any Comme collection, it was a Rorschach test – revelling in the unfamiliar, Kawakubo always challenges you to draw your own conclusions. Jack Moss

Balenciaga

Of all the creative directors at the nascent stages of new tenures, Pierpaolo Piccioli might have one of the steepest mountains to climb at Balenciaga. In the 16 years he spent at Valentino, prior to taking this new position in the spring of 2025, he demonstrated a Cristóbal Balenciaga-worthy approach to dressmaking that prioritised proportion and colour. But while Piccioli was sending out breathtaking confections of ballooning silk taffeta at Valentino, Balenciaga the brand was being injected with a new edge, at the hand of Vetements-founder Demna, whose zeitgeist-defining designs were laced with subversion and irony. How to bring the grandeur and romance that are Piccioli’s calling cards, without alienating the new demographic of customers who flocked to the brand under Demna?

For this season, his second collection, Piccioli pinned his hopes on a collaboration with Sam Levinson – the creator of Euphoria, the teen drama responsible for making internationally recognised stars out of its cast, which includes Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, and Hunter Schafer. Audiences at the Balenciaga A/W 2026 show were treated to a preview of clips from the HBO show’s third series (airing publicly in April), which played on screens across the venue; its interplay of light and dark was found running through the collection, which Piccioli had titled ‘ClairObscur’. The collection itself was a largely black affair, in light-catching high-gloss fabrics, punctuated by the occasional neon-toned print that harkened to Euphoria's colour-saturated visual style. If Euphoria – boundary-pushing, youth-orientated, and ever so slightly contentious – feels more spiritually within Demna’s wheelhouse than Piccioli’s, the High Renaissance references (‘ClairObscur’ is a play on clair-obscur or chiaroscuro, the artistic style beloved by Mannerist painters, which manifests as dramatically contrasting tones to create intense depth) brought proceedings firmly back into Piccioli’s world. India Jarvis

READ: Balenciaga taps Euphoria’s Sam Levinson for A/W 2026

Jean Paul Gaultier

After the shock factor of his debut last season – one which divided both critics and online commentators with its barely-there silhouettes and trompe l’oeil prints of nude bodies – Dutch designer Duran Lantink seemed to hit his stride this season, using his eye for the surreal and the sculptural to create a disruptive cast of archetypes, from the raver to the cowboy. Marlene Dietrich (or, more specifically, a treasured mesh T-shirt printed with the filmstar that Lantink had found in a vintage shop) was one figure on the moodboard, inspiring the clever opening tailoring, which came with jutting folds and sculpted lapels, while also being printed on a dress installed with dry ice (a nod to her favoured vice – cigarettes). The designer said she was a master in subverting tropes: ‘dominant, sexy and graceful, the ultimate hybrid’ – a mood that informed the shape-shifting collection. Tailoring metamorphosed into tech-y sportswear, trompe-l’oeil bodysuits of artist’s dummies were overlaid with lingerie, and puffer jackets became bodysuits. ‘It’s a spirit that suits the house of Gaultier, a place where the world is perpetually turned upside down,’ said Lantink via press notes. ‘Feminine and masculine, inside out, vintage and new, underwear as outerwear, technical and tailored all at once.’ Jack Moss

Chanel

Matthieu Blazy said that his sophomore ready-to-wear collection began with a quote from house founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel. ‘Fashion is both caterpillar and butterfly. Be a caterpillar by day and a butterfly by night,’ she said. ‘There is nothing more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing more made for love than a butterfly. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly.’ It seemed an apt description for Blazy’s own vision for Chanel thus far, one which elevates the quotidien through expressive acts of craft, and finds joy in both the functional and the glamorous. These are special clothes, no doubt (as anyone who has had the chance to see them up close can attest), though they are designed to be worn, not simply exalted. As such, he will no doubt be satisfied by the busy shop floors earlier this week as his debut collection landed (it was an ongoing fashion-week talking point), and more so to see those purchases worn by attendees to the show on Monday evening (and not just by the usual high-spending customers, but editors and stylists alike).

Staged amid a series of vast primary-coloured cranes – Blazy is, after all, still in the process of constructing his Chanel – the designer’s A/W 2026 collection was a brilliant and comprehensive exercise in wardrobing, which, to borrow Coco Chanel’s categorisation spanned the ‘caterpillar’ (roomy blazers, tweeds reformulated into lumberjack-style overshirts, simple jersey dresses), but also the ‘butterfly’. The latter came in an extraordinary stream of lustrous, colour-sturated looks at the end of the show, loaded with embellishment – appliqué flowers, lace and beads – and matched with models’ pastel-coloured or metallic hair. Over the 78 looks, there was a multitude of iterations of the Chanel woman, and the accessories to match (from gleaming metallic court shorts, to squashy crescent-shaped bags that recalled croissants). ‘Chanel is day, Chanel is night. It represents the freedom to choose between the caterpillar and the butterfly whenever you want,’ said Blazy. ‘I wish to create a canvas for women to be unapologetically who they are and who they want to be.’ Jack Moss

READ: Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore Chanel collection is made for ‘women to be unapologetically who they are’

Louis Vuitton

Nicolas Ghesquière staged his A/W 2026 collection for Louis Vuitton amid a show set by Severance production designer Jeremy Hindle, seeing rolling green hills – like those found in pastoral landscapes – abstracted into a series of sharp, futuristic peaks. The collection itself had a similar rationale, drawing inspiration from nature – ‘mountains, forests, plains’, and the clothing traditionally used to live among such elemental landscapes – and reimagining them through a series of Ghesquière’s typically idiosyncratic, time-travelling silhouettes. The idea of expedition seemed a throughline – supersized-wide-shouldered jackets, shearling hats and furry-hooded duffel coats seemed primed for protection, while bags hung on leather staffs like bindles – though there was a ceremonial feel to garments, which recalled traditional rural dress (though, in Ghesquière style, they were mashed up in such a way that the references were hard to place). ‘It is not an escape from our realities, but an echo of them,’ said Ghesquière of the vivid collection, which also featured the ‘urban pastoral’ works of Ukrainian artist Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko. ‘[It is] a new folklore, for the future.’ Jack Moss

Miu Miu

Miuccia Prada has long interrogated a woman’s place in the world: how they move through it, and a wardrobe that feels reflective of their needs. For A/W 2026, she was thinking about the ‘smallness of the body’ – not in its physical proportions, but in opposition with the vastness of the world around us. It feels like a response to our current era of overload: the runway at Palais d’Iéna was covered in a layer of soil and moss, a reminder that beyond the pomp and ceremony of luxury fashion, we are simply humans living in communion with the earth (as a seatmate commented, perhaps this was her instruction to ‘touch grass’). ‘I am obsessed with the smallness of the body – in a human sense, the contrast between ourselves, our bodies and the vastness of that which surrounds us,’ she said. ‘Who we are, and the scale and magnitude of what we have to face. This collection is not about fragility – there is a confidence, and a strength. But always about a confrontation between a human and the expansiveness of the world.’

As such, the collection segued between moments of strength and intimacy: for the former, enveloping trapper hats, hiking shoes and sporty shearling-lined parkas, for the latter, slip dresses, satin shoes and bejewelled embellishment. There felt something of the 1990s to it: not only in the more minimal looks, which intersected the middle of the show, but in that contrast between glamour and utility (a parka over a mini dress; a studded handbag; a block heel), and also the appearance of Chloë Sevigny, a longtime house muse who first walked for Miu Miu in 1996. She was joined by a coterie of ‘individuals’ on the runway, from models Gemma Ward and Kristen McMenamy to the actress Gillian Anderson, who closed the show. Jack Moss

READ: Miu Miu’s all-star cast for A/W 2026 featured Gillian Anderson and Chloë Sevigny

Amid the heady spectacle of the numerous debuts which took place this past September – 15 new creative directors debuted across the S/S 2026 season of runway shows – it is easy to forget that these were garments which would, eventually, arrive on the rails of stores, far away from the buzz and furore of Paris and Milan (or, indeed, the enormous glowing planets, inverted pyramids or ice-like glass stools of the arresting runway sets which they were backdropped with).

Yesterday (8 January 2026) in London, Jonathan Anderson heralded the arrival of his first collections for Dior (menswear and womenswear, as revealed in Paris) with an ephemeral pop-up in London’s Selfridges department store (the newly installed space takes over the prime ‘Corner Shop’ at the front of the store, straddling Oxford Street and Davies Street). Encapsulating a feeling of both spectacle and arrival, the windows are stacked high with grey Dior boxes – a recently introduced design, imprinted with a de-capitalised Dior logo, which reflects the house’s original 1946 typeface. Inside, two mannequins struggle to hold piles of even more grey parcels.

These boxes are based on originals from Colifichets, the first-ever Dior store, which opened in 1947 (directed by Christian Dior’s friend Carmen Colle, it sold various trinkets, scarves and curiosities, operating from the ground floor of the house’s 30 Avenue Montaigne address). Indeed, the pop-up has its own Wunderkammer feel: boxes open to reveal Lady Dior handbags, or Anderson’s riff on the Book Tote, here emblazoned with the covers of classic books, from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire (the same graphics appear on T-shirts and accessories).

Meanwhile, cabinets and drawers reveal a menagerie of animal-shaped charms, constructed from the tools of the atelier, from thimbles and embroidery scissors to twisting measuring tapes. Ready-to-wear spans mens and womenswear – intermingled on the shop floor for the first time – with the pieces on show encapsulating a mood of freshness and contemporary romance that feels at the heart of Anderson’s vision for the house. Motifs that run throughout include the four-leaved clover – a nod to both Anderson’s native Ireland, but also of Christian Dior’s fascination with superstitious emblems and charms.

Indeed, for those feeling lucky, a special draw invites guests to select a mystery card which, when unwrapped, could win you a prize from the collection (sadly, when Wallpaper* dropped by, we had no such luck). Elsewhere, notebooks and bookmarks can be personalised – a nod, say the house, to Anderson’s love of literature, which has provided an undercurrent to his tenure at Dior thus far.

Dior at the Corner Shop at Selfridges runs until 28 February 2026.

dior.com

‘Change is inevitable,’ said Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson ahead of his debut womenswear show for Dior, which was held in Paris this past October. Presented amid a gleaming white show set conceived by director Luca Guadagnino and his longtime production designer Stefano Baisi, it was preceded by a film by British filmmaker Adam Curtis, who is best known for his found footage documentaries which explore themes of individualism, progress and power – notably in The Century of the Self, HyperNormalisation, and the recent 2025 series Shifty, which captures the ‘unstable, exciting and frightening’ truths of living in Great Britain at the turn of the milennium.

For the show, in his distinctive style, Curtis mashed up archival clips from the house’s history – and its previous creative directors – alongside shuddering footage from horror movies from the same period. It captured both the thrill and anxiety which underlie a high-profile debut such as this: ‘Dare you enter the house of Dior?’ read its opening title card. ‘Daring to enter the house of Dior requires an empathy with its history, a willingness to decode its language, which is part of the collective imagination, and the resoluteness to put all of it in a box,’ elaborated Anderson in the accompanying collection notes. ‘Not to erase it, but to store it, looking ahead, coming back to bits, traces or entire silhouettes from time to time, like revisiting memories.’

The collection which followed embraced this rationale by ‘recoding’ the house’s archive in the former Loewe designer’s endlessly inventive and oftentimes idiosyncratic style. Classic Dior silhouettes – like the 1947 Bar Suit – were warped and shrunken in proportion, while the bow became a motif throughout, informing the construction of blazers and gowns. Elsewhere, he straddled the theatrical – cornette-style headpieces, dramatic plumes of lace and a bold colour palette – and something more quotidien, like a series of simple denim skirts, plaid shirts and even a riff on the legging. Anderson described it as a ‘tension’ between fantasy and reality, ‘dressing as a way to become a character on the stage that is life’.

In the December 2025 Entertaining Issue of Wallpaper*, Paris-based photographic duo Antoine and Charlie and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture the S/S 2026 collection, with a focus on the accessories. They prove particularly desirable: bunny-shaped ears on a ladylike pump or those adorned with rosette-like flowers, while handbags span the soft (a suede duffle bag adorned with the house’s cannage motif) and the structured, like the folded line of the ‘Dior Cigale’ bag, inspired by the architectural construction of Christian Dior’s 1952 ‘La Cigale’ dress. Others demonstrate the house’s superlative craft: a version of the Lady Dior handbag is adorned with hundreds of tiny green four-leaf clovers, a nod to the house founder’s love of superstitious talismans and iconography.

A version of this article appears in the December 2025 Entertaining Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News + from 6 November. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Model: Heather Kemesky at Storm Management Casting: Dean Goodman Set design: Samirha Salmi at Swan Management Production: Kit Pak-Poy at Birdhouse Co Hair: Claudio Belizario at Call My Agent Make-up: Ruby Mazuel at Call My Agent Manicure: Virginie Mataja at Call My Agent Fashion assistant: Eva Rapti Set assistants: Antoine Auboiron, Roxane Raoux Production assistant: Kate Maidment Retouching: Sparks Post.

Wedgwood and JW Anderson present an exclusive collection of designs by British studio potter Lucie Rie, dating back to a 1964 collaboration with the fine china brand, but never put into production.

Lucie Rie's pottery work

Born in Austria, Rie fled Nazi Austria in 1938 and established herself in London. Alongside her creative work, she was making ceramic objects, including buttons and jewellery for fashion houses, an experience that later informed her precise colourwork. She was also known for her ‘sgraffito’ technique, consisting of carefully scratching the surface of the material to reveal a different shade underneath. So many decades on, her work is defined by a language that still feels modern. ‘Lucie Rie is one of the greatest potters of the 20th century,’ says Jonathan Anderson, who for many years now has been a collector of her work.

‘Rie worked with incredible restraint and clarity, something that feels transcendent,’ says Emma Glynn, Wedgwood’s creative director. ‘Her refined silhouettes, experimental glazes, and graphic use of line challenged traditional notions of ceramics and paved the way for contemporary makers to explore this medium for both artistic and functional expression.’

Wedgwood and JW Anderson release Lucie Rie designs

Working closely with the Estate of Lucie Rie, Glynn and Anderson developed Rie’s original Wedgwood commission for the first time. Defined by Jasper blue surfaces with white graphic inlays, the collection includes two sets – a teacup and saucer, and a coffee cup and saucer – developed with a technique that makes them faithful to Rie’s designs.

‘The line is unmistakably Lucie Rie, and that’s what I love about these designs,’ continues Glynn. ‘It’s both decorative and structural, creating movement without ever overwhelming the form. It’s a quiet confidence that truly captures her signature style. Bringing that together with our iconic Jasper material, this becomes a remarkable meeting of minds – Wedgwood and Lucie Rie, two visionary forces in a collaboration that truly transcends time.’

The objects are made with a combination of machine and handwork. Once moulded, the pieces are fitted to the turning machine, where an artisan shapes them and ribs them by hand – a process similar to Rie’s own studio work.

‘[We used a] technique called “slip trailing inlay”, and to my knowledge, this is the only time we've used it,’ says Glynn. ‘It's an extremely difficult method – perhaps one of the reasons the design didn’t move forward initially. That said, it's a truly beautiful technique, and one I hope we continue to incorporate into our design language.’

The proceeds from the collaboration will support the newly formed Lucie Rie and Hans Coper Foundation, working to grant the long-term accessibility, digitisation and preservation of archival material. As part of the initiative, a grant scheme will be established to promote academic and creative scholarships.

‘It’s a chance to honour a collaboration she always hoped would happen,’ says Anderson. ‘What’s truly remarkable is that Wedgwood has now realised these designs in the way Rie envisioned them. I think she would be thrilled to see these pieces finally brought to life, especially in this charitable context.’

The collaboration will be available from selected stores in China, Japan and the US, Harrods and Selfridges in the UK, wedgwood.com, JW Anderson Soho in London, JW Anderson Milan, JW Anderson Shibuya Parco Tokyo, and at jwanderson.com from 19 September 2025

'I like change. I have wanted to change things around for two years now, and finally I feel at one with who I am today and what the brand means,’ says Jonathan Anderson of his label’s new lean into cultural lifestyle. This new brand direction, which takes shape in everything from the JW Anderson store architecture by Sanchez Benton, to the championing of homewares, art and artisanal goods inside them, is driven by Anderson’s love of collecting and curating.

His passion shines through in the joyfully eclectic selection – ‘things that I either want to wear or want to live with,’ says Anderson – which ranges from ceramics by Akiko Hirai to Lucie Rie mugs and Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Scottish oak stools.

Curating, of course, comes naturally for Anderson, who has developed a distinctive artistic sensibility in his role as occasional curator at institutions such as the Hepworth Wakefield, Offer Waterman and, in October 2025, the Holburne Museum. Art plays a crucial role in the new concept – selected by Anderson, who took an organic, gallery-like approach, the works will be on display in the new stores from November.

Ranging from the abstract to the expressionist, the artworks, which were previewed in July at an installation held at Galerie Joseph in Paris, are united in their quiet consideration of the small moments, defined by a preoccupation with a hidden internal life, often shifting the focus to the unseen or perhaps unnoticed – a mood, a moment, some flowers, some fruit. Colours are striking, with the rich pink or lime green hues of artist Mary Stephenson’s work immediately zinging into focus in a thrilling embrace of the fashion poised around it. Despite eschewing traditional portraiture – unlike her earlier works, the figure is now absent from her paintings – there is a perceptive boldness in her sharp planes, conjuring up an internal world rife with the peaks and troughs of human psychology.

Interiors, too, are key for the late Gwen John, whose muted tones and sparse use of colour are a controlled antidote to the emotions they conjure – a dichotomy also seen in Christina Kimeze’s colourful, hard-to-place landscapes. In the work of the late American artist Robert Kulicke, which Anderson says he has always loved, evocative still lifes, primarily of pears, are intimate in scale. They draw on a rich historicity in their elevation of everyday objects.

‘The idea is how all these things talk together,’ adds Anderson. ‘Ultimately, it’s showing the influence and how I see things, and how it all figures together.’ Anderson has worked with long-term collaborator Andrew Bonacina to bring artists into the fashion context through special projects, making artists an integral part of the new brand direction.

‘I always look back to the early 20th century when the worlds of art, design, fashion and music were much more intertwined,’ says Bonacina. ‘I think artists are once again looking for this kind of interdisciplinary thinking. JW Anderson is a brand, and the stores are commercial spaces, but they have been carefully conceived so that everything that is brought into the space, including art, has a considered dialogue with the things around it.’

jwanderson.com

This article appears in the September 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

For Wallpaper’s September Style Issue, we slip the surly bonds of stuffy sobriety to embrace the spirit of glamour and luxury that flowed through the A/W 2025 collections, twisted and subverted by the season’s designers. Case in point: Prada, where Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ womenswear collection took an unfiltered look at luxuriousness and femininity under the banner of ‘Raw Glamour’.

There were similar explorations of glamorous archetypes at Miu Miu – notably, the pointed 1950s ‘bullet’ bras – and at Fendi, for which meticulously dyed shearlings were made to appear like fox, mink and sable. The vibe shift is reflected in our womenswear shoot, styled by fashion and creative director Jason Hughes and photographed by Nicole Maria Winkler.

It was a similar story at the menswear shows, which saw garments shot through with a sense of sensuality, elements of which Jason, working with Melanie + Ramon, picked up on for our menswear shoot, capturing a new ‘dangerous’ mood.

Meanwhile, fashion features editor Jack Moss unpacks the trends of the season, and he also travelled to Rome to meet Silvia Venturini Fendi, who, as Fendi celebrates 100 years, has taken on sole creative control following the exit of Kim Jones. In Paris, Hannah Tindle talks to Nicolas Di Felice, who is breathing new life into Courrèges with a sleek, modernist vision influenced by art, architecture and raves.

Taking a peek behind the scenes, design critic Hugo Macdonald profiles production studio Bureau Betak, the creative superpower behind spectacular A/W25 runway show sets for the likes of Valentino, Gucci and Burberry. Danielle Demetriou travelled to Tokyo to visit Acne Studios’ new flagship store in Aoyama, while Hannah Silver headed to Paris to speak to Jonathan Anderson about his new vision for JW Anderson, which also sees him turn art curator (and art dealer).

Sofia de la Cruz chats with Harry Nuriev – a designer beloved by the fashion industry – as he opens his new east London restaurant, Noisy Oyster. And finally, for the latest in our End Paper series, Simon Chilvers delivers a paean to brown, fashion’s most underrated hue.

Bill Prince
Editor-in-Chief

On the womenswear cover: Coat (on top), £26,000, by Fendi. Coat (underneath), price on request, by Balenciaga. Boots, price on request, by Acne Studios. Bodysuit; tights, both stylist’s own. ‘No 2’ bar stool, from £3,052, by Eileen Gray, from Aram. Alpaca rug, £4,763, by The Rug Company

On the menswear cover: Jacket, £2,100, by Numeroventuno by Alessandro Dell’Acqua. Shirt, £900, by Zegna. T-shirt; jeans, both price on request, by Celine. Boots, £1,700, by Prada. Necklace, £270, by 886 The Royal Mint. Belt, £289, by Commission

The September 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands from 7 August 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Representing the very pinnacle of Parisian fashion – a dizzying haze of gowns, celebrity attendees and theatrical presentations designed to tempt a handful of wealthy clients – Haute Couture Week arrives next Monday in the French capital with plenty of moments to look out for. Because, while haute couture remains the preserve of the ultra-rich, its focus on superlative savoir-faire and fantastical design means there are true fashion thrills to be had – ones that so often filter down into the style zeitgeist.

Notably, these include the arrival of Glenn Martens at Maison Margiela – following the highly lauded tenure of John Galliano – and the swansong of Demna at Balenciaga before he border-hops to his new role at Gucci in Italy. There will also be the final Chanel collection to be designed in-house before the arrival of Matthieu Blazy, who will debut during ready-to-wear week in September, and the reveal of ‘new beginnings’ at JW Anderson. Elsewhere, Dior will press pause on showing at haute couture week (new creative director Jonathan Anderson will make his debut in the medium next January), alongside Valentino and Jean Paul Gaultier.

Here, Wallpaper* breaks down five of Haute Couture Week A/W 2025’s expected standout moments – stay tuned for live coverage, beginning next Monday on wallpaper.com (7 July 2025).

Glenn Martens will show his first collection for Maison Margiela

Though he has big shoes to fill – predecessor John Galliano’s ten-year tenure at Maison Margiela provided some of the most memorable runway moments of recent times – Glenn Martens comes with the goodwill of the industry, after a stellar tenure at Y/Project (he also is creative director at Diesel, a role he will continue alongside Maison Margiela). With the runway show scheduled for Wednesday evening as couture week’s final act, little has been revealed about what we can expect – neither Martens nor Maison Margiela have posted any kind of teaser – though expect a focus on deconstruction (a hallmark of both Maison Margiela and Martens’ work) through a subculture-inflected lens. ‘I feel extremely honoured to join the amazing Maison Margiela, a truly unique house that has been inspiring the world for decades,’ Martens said after the appointment, which was announced in January after Galliano’s departure.

READ: Glenn Martens is headed to Maison Margiela as the house’s new creative director

A new vision for JW Anderson will be revealed

Fresh off his acclaimed debut collection for Dior – which saw him ‘decode and recode’ the house’s archive – Irish designer Jonathan Anderson is undertaking a similar act of reinvention for his own label, JW Anderson, which remains based in London. He will reveal his new vision on Monday afternoon in Paris, having teased ‘new beginnings’ on Instagram for the past weeks – including a newly refreshed store design, labels, packaging, and what looks like an edit of homeware (from jugs and chairs to JW-branded trowels). Seeming to err towards a mood of British craft and timelessness, the glimpses of clothing have followed a similar track, from woollen plaid kilts and striped polo tees to cable-knit sweaters and workwear jeans. Though a sweater collaboration with Berlin-based queer artist Dean Sameshima, reading ‘Anonymous Trade’, confirms that the frisson of subversion that has long defined Anderson’s work remains.

Demna will hold his Balenciaga swansong

It has become increasingly rare for creative directors to have the opportunity to host a ‘final show’ after their departure from a house – in recent seasons, exits have largely taken immediate effect, with the reins being handed straight over to a successor or in-house design team. For Balenciaga’s Demna, his transformative tenure at the house is being celebrated by a final haute couture show, unfolding in the original restored haute couture salon on Tuesday (this is likely because he is moving to another house in the Kering roster, Gucci, rather than one under a competitor conglomerate). Expect a typically contemporary vision of haute couture from the Georgian designer, a medium that has perhaps been the highlight of his decade at the house. ’We’ve become numb to the beauty of the world. Why don’t we see the beauty anymore?’ he told Wallpaper* of his haute couture approach. ‘We need it to survive.’

READ: ‘What is beauty?’: Balenciaga’s Demna on creating thoroughly modern haute couture

Dior will take a pause from showing

Though Anderson hosted his opening act at Dior last week – showing his inaugural menswear collection for the house on Friday afternoon – fans of the newly refreshed vision will have to wait a little longer to see his first haute couture collection, which represents the pinnacle of Dior’s oeuvre (after all, the house’s namesake Christian Dior is arguably the most famous couturier of the 20th-century). Taking a rare pause from the schedule, Anderson is expected to make his couture debut next January for S/S 2026, though Dior is not entirely without a haute couture collection – Maria Grazia Chiuri’s final Cruise show in Rome included a number of couture looks, which will likely be offered to clients this July in a series of private appointments.

The couture heavyweights will show throughout the week

Rounding out the schedule will be outings from a trio of haute couture heavyweights: Schiaparelli, Chanel and Armani Privé (Valentino will not show, having shifted to a once-a-year schedule for couture, while Jean Paul Gaultier awaits the arrival of new creative director Duran Lantink). At Schiaparelli, American designer Daniel Roseberry will continue to hone his sculptural, theatrical vision for the house – which has amassed a legion of devotees and spawned a ready-to-wear line – while at Chanel, it will be the final outing for the in-house design studio before Matthieu Blazy’s tenure begins with a debut womenswear collection in September. Meanwhile, at Armani Privé, after Giorgio Armani did not appear for his final bow at his menswear shows in Milan – a note from the house said he was recovering at home after a recent hospitalisation – guests will hope the designer will be back in full health for the presentation, which takes place on Tuesday evening.

After a smattering of off-schedule shows in London this past weekend, including outings from Martine Rose and Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2026 officially commences today in Florence (17 June 2025) with the opening of the 108th edition of the city’s historic menswear fair. In surging mid-30s heat, this season’s guest shows will include a no-doubt colourful outing from Homme Plissé Issey Miyake at Villa Medicea della Petraia on the slopes of Monte Morello on Wednesday evening, before eyes turn to Milan on Friday, seeing the latest collections from Prada, Giorgio Armani and Dolce & Gabbana shown amid a slew of presentations, showrooms and (much-needed) aperitivo.

The final stop is Paris, where – despite a packed six-day-long schedule – it is Jonathan Anderson’s debut show for Dior which will absorb the fashion world’s attention (the former Loewe creative director is now overseeing Dior’s menswear, womenswear and haute couture). Indeed, when the Wallpaper* style editors and contributors were straw-polled on what they were most looking forward to this menswear month, everyone put his inaugural collection for the Parisian house at the top of their list. But there was plenty more – read on for everything the Wallpaper* editors are looking forward to at Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2026.

Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2026: what the Wallpaper* editors are looking forward to

Jason Hughes, fashion and creative director

Like most people in fashion, I’m most looking forward to Jonathan Anderson’s debut at Dior on the Friday of Paris Fashion Week – I was a big fan of his work at Loewe, where he created such a universe around his clothing. I own a lot of pieces he designed there, so I’m excited to see what he has in store. If it’s anything like his work at Loewe – or indeed his work at eponymous London label JW Anderson – it will shift the fashion needle, and have us all wanting something new.

In Milan, it's all about Prada: you can always expect the unexpected from Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, from the show set – which in recent seasons has included dripping goo, sci-fi tunnels and surreal officescapes – to the clothes themselves. Elsewhere, I've been impressed by London-based designer Kiko Kostadinov in the last couple of seasons. His idiosyncratic approach to pattern cutting and colour always veers towards the strange, in the best possible way. He’s showing his latest menswear collection on the final Sunday of Paris, closing out Men’s Fashion Month.

Jack Moss, fashion features editor

One of my highlights has actually already happened: a surprise off-schedule show from British designer Martine Rose this weekend in London, held among a maze of ruffled boudoir curtains in an empty job centre close to west London’s Edgware Road (on a lower floor, Rose had curated a market from her creative community of designers, record sellers and magazine publishers). Befitting the show set (‘our version of a salon’), Rose said that the collection was about finding beauty in the unexpected, seeing her trademark underground style (queer and cruising culture have been a longtime reference) softened with flourishes of lace, satin and silk, while silhouettes were shrunken to the body. ‘Everything feels a bit cinched or too tight, a bit awkward but still sexy, I hope,’ she said after the show, tequila already in hand. It was. Weird, sexy, desirable, and entirely on her own terms, it was my favourite collection of hers in some time.

Elsewhere, I'm of course excited for Jonathan Anderson’s Dior debut (who isn’t?), while in Milan I join Jason in looking forward to Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ latest vision for Prada menswear (as ever, it will likely set the tone for the season ahead). An on-schedule Saint Laurent menswear show, on the opening day of Paris Fashion Week, is also on my highlights list, as is a duo of exhibition openings (also in Paris) from two of the city’s boundary-pushing designers: Demna, who will stage a retrospective of his work at Balenciaga prior to leaving for Gucci next month, and Rick Owens’ ‘Temple of Love’ exhibition, which opens at the Palais Galliera on June 28.

Scarlett Conlon, Milan contributor

The big reveal that I’m most looking forward to is, of course, Jonathan Anderson at Dior during the Paris leg of the shows. I’m fascinated to see how he brings the idiosyncratic charm that he has carved out a niche in to the storied French maison.

Elsewhere, with presentations outnumbering shows in Milan, I always love the opportunity that menswear provides to get up and close with the sartorial expertise of the clothes and talk with the designers; Brioni, Tod’s, and Brunello Cucinelli are always highlights, each finding new ways to make their super luxe offering feel relevant and fresh (and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t already planned what time I’ll be at the famous parmesan wheel at the latter).

Orla Brennan, contributing fashion writer

Besides seeing what Jonathan Anderson will do with his first collection for Dior – a moment we are all very excited about – I’m most looking forward to Prada. If Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ last few shows are anything to go by, I predict an intriguing show set and cast of interesting (possibly celebrity) characters coming down the runway – plus, of course, their usual agenda-setting fashion, guaranteed to shift what we find desirable.

I’m also looking forward to Wales Bonner’s return to the Paris Fashion Week schedule. The brand isn’t known for big spectacles, but the stories, music and clothes are always so clever and soulful – a testament to the eponymous designer’s superlative world-building ability.

Read the full Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2026 preview here.

When it was announced that Maria Grazia Chiuri would be exiting her role as creative director of Dior’s womenswear and haute couture collections last week – following an emotive Cruise show in her home city of Rome – the writing was all but on the wall. After months of fervent speculation, it was confirmed this morning that Jonathan Anderson would head up the Parisian house’s womenswear, menswear and couture collections – an unprecedented appointment which sees him take near-total creative control of Dior (he was announced as menswear creative director in April).

Indeed, it is the first time in Dior’s 79-year history that a single figure has overseen the house’s womenswear and menswear offerings. The men’s line was first introduced during Marc Bohan’s tenure in the 1980s as Dior Monsieur, though grew to prominence under Hedi Slimane in the early 2000s. Kris Van Assche would follow, before Kim Jones – Anderson’s predecessor – took over ‘Dior Men’ in the summer of 2018. Slimane, Assche and Jones all worked distinctly from their respective womenswear creative directors, while Anderson will oversee the various arms of the business as a singular creative identity – a way of working he is familiar, having led both the men’s and women’s collections of Loewe, where he was previously creative director for 11 years.

Jonathan Anderson’s Dior: what to expect

‘It is a great honour to join the house of Dior as creative director of both women’s and men’s collections. I have always been inspired by the rich history of this house, its depth, and empathy,’ said Anderson in a statement this morning. ‘I look forward to working alongside its legendary ateliers to craft the next chapter of this incredible story.’

With his appointment comes the inevitable question of what we can expect from Anderson’s Dior. At Loewe, he proved a masterful creative director, not only in terms of his collections – which moved from an early exaltation of craft towards the surrealism, and later reductionism, of his more recent work – but in his establishment of a rich, cultural brand which extended far beyond fashion. Memorably, he introduced the yearly Loewe Craft Prize, which awarded artisanal creators from around the world in a high-profile ceremony, held presentations each year at Salone del Mobile, reimagining chairs, lamps and baskets, and established a dedicated and eclectic coterie of celebrity followers, who also appeared in the house’s campaigns (during his time at the house, he would also collaborate with Luca Guadagnino on the costumes for Challengers and Queer under his own name).

‘While reflecting on the last 11 years, I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by people with the imagination, the skills, the tenacity and the resourcefulness to find a way to say “yes” to all my wildly ambitious ideas,’ he said when he left Loewe. We can expect such big ideas at Dior from the ambitious Northern Ireland-born designer, who began his eponymous label JW Anderson in 2008 before taking over Loewe in 2013 and transforming the fortunes of a then sleepy brand in the LVMH roster (sales purportedly went from €200 million to around €1.5 billion).

At Dior, he has a different challenge: the house is already a behemoth of fashion with a name recognition which extends far beyond the industry (for comparison, Loewe has 6.5 million followers on Instagram; Dior has close to 50 million). It also has thriving beauty, make-up, jewellery and home décor lines – among several other arms of the business – which Anderson will work alongside to shape the vision of the house. It is a task he will no doubt relish. ‘I think I need to find a new way to break something,’ he told the New Yorker in March, just prior to his confirmation as creative director of Dior Men’s. ‘I’ve built something – either I re-break it and rebuild it or someone else re-breaks and rebuilds it. I think I need to get outside of my comfort zone again and be challenged by aesthetics I’m not used to.’

So far, he has only offered the briefest glimpses of his vision for Dior, via his personal Instagram, a much-favoured means of communication from the designer. The first, just after the Dior Men announcement, was a photograph of a piece of striped cotton – reminiscent of a classic men’s shirt – with a Dior label pinned onto it. The second, posted today, is of a series of stitched leather four-leaf clovers, on which a tiny ladybug sits. The latter suggests a possible return to the more whimsical side of Loewe – animals were often employed as motifs on leather charms, or appeared on bags and accessories – though also seemed a nod to Christian Dior himself, who was deeply superstitious, obsessed with symbols of luck and chance (the four-leaf clover also seems a wink to Anderson’s own Irish roots).

We also know the extent of the task: as it stands, Anderson will be creating 10 collections a year for the house (four women’s collections, four men’s, and two couture), though his forebears Chiuri and Jones also created other limited-edition collections and collaborations, so it could be more. He will also be continuing his eponymous London-based label JW Anderson, though he has teased on Instagram a ‘new start’ for the brand, including a renovation of the brand’s flagship store in London’s Soho.

In an interview with Business of Fashion this morning, Dior's CEO Delphine Arnault confirmed that the house will sit out the haute couture shows this July (another unprecendented move, though Chiuri did show a series of haute couture looks during the show in Rome, which will likely be presented to clients as this season’s couture offering). ‘He’s very in tune with his generation. He’s very connected, especially with young people. He speaks to a wide audience,’ she said. ‘He’s passionate about craft, about art – and he’s proven that at Loewe. I think he’s also going to surprise you, and everyone… and even me, maybe! I can’t say too much about what he’s going to do, but I think his vision, his passion for craft, and also for leather goods, is going to be something very exciting in the years to come.’

In terms of leather goods, Loewe’s Puzzle bag – which celebrates ten years with a Harrods pop-up this month – was perhaps one element of Anderson’s oeuvre which impressed Arnault, a perennial fashion accessory which continues to be ubiquitous a decade on. It is symbolic of his thoughtful, oftentimes esoteric approach to design: ‘It was about deconstructing a conventional bag to create a flat object with a tridimensional function,’ he said of the Puzzle’s origami-like structure at the time. ‘I set out to find a new way of building a bag, fundamentally questioning its structure.’ Dior will be hoping for such a bag to add to its already successful roster.

The good news is, we don't have long to wait. Anderson has confirmed that his debut for the house will take place during Men’s Fashion Week in Paris later this month. He will show his collection – at an as-yet undisclosed location – on the afternoon of Friday 27 June. The world will be watching. ‘Jonathan Anderson is one of the greatest creative talents of his generation,’ says Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH, Dior’s parent company. ‘His incomparable artistic signature will be a crucial asset in writing the next chapter of the history of the house of Dior.’

dior.com

After months of speculation and rumour, it has been confirmed this morning that Jonathan Anderson is the new creative director of Dior Men, succeeding Kim Jones, who exited the Parisian house in January.

Anderson arrives at Dior from Loewe, after a transformative 11-year tenure as creative director of the house’s men’s and womenswear lines. The news was announced this morning by Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH, at the luxury conglomerate’s shareholder meeting.

The Northern Irish designer rose to prominence with his eponymous London-based label JW Anderson, joining Loewe in 2013. Reimagining the Spanish house’s visual identity, alongside M/M Paris, he would make Loewe into one of fashion’s major players, know for an idiosyncratic, oftentimes surreal approach to design and elevation of craft (later collections would include elements from balloon-shaped heels to hammered-metal angel wings).

‘While reflecting on the last 11 years, I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by people with the imagination, the skills, the tenacity and the resourcefulness to find a way to say “yes” to all my wildly ambitious ideas,’ Anderson said at the time. ‘While my chapter draws to a close, Loewe’s story will continue for many years to come, and I will look on with pride, watching it continue to grow, the amazing Spanish brand I once called home.’

Though it is yet to be announced, Anderson is set to continue at his eponymous label. His first collection for Dior Men will be shown in June 2025 in Paris. At Loewe, he will be succeeded by Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, founders of Proenza Schouler.

A ‘visual retrospective’ is how Loewe describes a new, large-format publication that celebrates Jonathan Anderson’s transformative 11-year tenure at the Spanish fashion house. On Monday morning (17 March), Anderson announced that he was leaving his role as Loewe’s creative director, with his A/W 2025 collection – shown in an intimate, art-filled presentation in Paris earlier this month – being his last.

‘11 years ago, I was given the most incredible opportunity: to write a chapter in a story that is now 179 years old,’ Anderson said on his Instagram account. ‘Over [this time], I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by people with the imagination, the skills, tenacity and resourcefulness to find a way to say “yes” to all my wildly ambitious ideas.’

‘Crafted World: Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe’ book

Titled Crafted World: Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe – a reference to ‘Loewe Crafted World’, an exhibition that opened last May 2025 in Shanghai – the wide-ranging book collates photography and ephemera from both his runway shows and his various cultural initiatives and collaborations. These include the annual Craft Prize, which Anderson calls his ‘proudest achievement’ at the house – one which has proved highly influential.

‘We created a platform that genuinely supports and gives visibility to vanishing crafts, young makers, old masters, and new ideas,’ he said on Monday. The last edition was held in Paris last summer. ‘It’s a bridge to help people,’ he told Wallpaper* at the time. ‘Craft is the essence of Loewe. That’s where modernity lies, and it will always be relevant.’

The book’s timeline spans a decade at the house, from his debut S/S 2015 women’s show to his S/S 2025 menswear show, which featured an exhibition-like show set featuring works by Paul Thek, Carlo Scarpa, Peter Hujar, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Susan Sontag. ‘I like that these people are singular in terms of their vision,’ he said at the time. ‘It’s about knowing when to pull back, or when to push it,’

Indeed, the book also captures his numerous collaborations with artists, including Anthea Hamilton, one of his closest creative confidantes. For his A/W 2022 womenswear show, her giant pumpkins populated the set, while in 2018, Anderson designed the surreal, squash-shaped costumes for her installation at Tate Britain. She would also participate in one of Loewe’s projects at Milan Design Week – another one of Anderson’s cultural initiatives at the house – creating a kimono-inspired lamp alongside 23 other artists for the 2024 edition.

One her her pumpkins features on the cover of the tome, which spans a vast 636 pages. Alongside the eclectic assemblage of imagery – which comprises show sets, campaigns, store interiors and behind-the-scenes moments – the author Zadie Smith has written a foreword, alongside a conversation between Anderson and stylist and longtime collaborator Benjamin Bruno. Interviews with Loewe ‘friends and family’ also feature.

The book, which is published by Loewe, will be able to pre-order tomorrow (21 March 2025), prior to a wider release on 27 March 2025. Strictly limited edition, each will come in a custom box featuring the Loewe monogram in copper on each corner. It will be available from loewe.com and selected international retailers.

Pre-order ‘Crafted World: Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe’ here.

loewe.com

Jonathan Anderson is stepping down from his role as creative director of Spanish luxury house Loewe, it has been confirmed this morning. The announcement comes after fervent speculation about the Northern Irish designer’s next move, and the absence of Loewe runway shows on both the men’s and women’s Paris Fashion Week schedules this season.

‘While reflecting on the last 11 years, I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by people with the imagination, the skills, the tenacity and the resourcefulness to find a way to say “yes” to all my wildly ambitious ideas,’ Anderson said in a statement. ‘While my chapter draws to a close, Loewe’s story will continue for many years to come, and I will look on with pride, watching it continue to grow, the amazing Spanish brand I once called home.’

An A/W 2025 collection, shown in an intimate presentation earlier this month in Paris, will be his last.

Jonathan Anderson is leaving Loewe

Anderson, who rose to renown with his eponymous London-based label JW Anderson, joined Loewe in 2013. Then a relatively sleepy house in the LVMH roster, Anderson would begin its transformation into a global player by reimagining its visual identity alongside French creative studio M/M Paris. A memorable debut campaign featured his revived Loewe logo – written in a font inspired by German-born typographer Berthold Wolpe – alongside a mix of contemporary and archival imagery by Steven Meisel from a 1997 Vogue Italia shoot.

Anderson’s early collections for the house were rooted in the idea of craft and ease: his debut collection featured turned-up fisherman’s trousers, sinuous striped knitwear, python espadrilles and voluminous poplin shirts, while models grasped Loewe-branded blankets in their hands. ‘I like the idea that people today are so culturally aware that everything that goes into their homes matters as much as each piece of clothing,’ he told Wallpaper* at the time, hinting towards the universe he would build at Loewe, which would eventually include fragrance, home scents, decorative objects, and a series of Salone del Mobile projects which reimagined chairs, lamps and baskets. He would also create a summer diffusion line, Loewe Paula’s Ibiza, inspired by the legendary bohemian boutique on the Balearic island.

The introduction of the Puzzle bag in his S/S 2015 collection would provide his first commercial hit. A top-handle style constructed from jigsaw puzzle-like slices of leather, its proportions are designed to adapt to the wearer’s body. ‘I set out to find a new way of building a bag, fundamentally questioning its structure… it was about deconstructing a conventional bag to create a flat object with a tridimensional function,’ he said at the time. It has since been reimagined in various sizes, including the ubiquitous Puzzle tote, introduced for A/W 2023. Other hits have included reworked versions of the house’s Flamenco bag, which began life in the 1970s, and the crossbody Gate bag.

Recent seasons have seen Anderson adopt a more avant-garde approach with collections featuring surreal elements – from balloon-shaped heels to enormous perspex flowers and hammered-metal angel wings – or garments reduced to their absolute essence. ‘I wanted something erotic, psychedelic, touching on Surrealism,’ he said of his S/S 2022 show, which marked something of a turning point for the designer, seeing models rise from beneath the runway making the audience assess the look from the head down. ‘Everything appears normal, but it’s not really. I didn’t want to create a collection that was completely grounded in reality’.

More recently, he has talked about the idea of reduction, with his S/S 2025 menswear collection featuring sharply defined tailoring with elongated feather headpieces, which gave the effect of slicing the look in half. ‘It’s about knowing when to pull back, or when to push it,’ he told Wallpaper* after the show. ‘This is my own interpretation of precision.’

That same collection was shown amid a gallery-like collection of works by Paul Thek, Carlo Scarpa, Peter Hujar and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, selected by Anderson for their ‘singular’ vision. Such a multi-disciplinary approach has defined his tenure at Loewe, including numerous artist collaborations – among them Lynda Benglis, Richard Hawkins and Anthea Hamilton – and the establishment of the yearly Loewe Craft Prize, which supports ‘uniquely talented artisans whose artistic vision and will to innovate set new standards for the future of craft’.

Meanwhile figures from film, like Dame Maggie Smith, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Ayo Edebiri and Richard Gadd, have appeared in the house’s campaigns (during his tenure, he would also work with Luca Guadagnino on the costumes for Challengers and Queer under his own name). Loewe would also sponsor the 2024 Costume Institute exhibition Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, dressing a slew of celebrities for the accompanying Met Gala, including Taylor Russell, Ariana Grande, and Jamie Dornan. Also in 2024, Loewe would host the ‘Loewe Crafted World’ in Shanghai, exploring and celebrating craft past and present in all its forms.

‘I have had the pleasure of working with some of the great artistic directors of recent times, and I consider Jonathan Anderson to be amongst the very best. What he has contributed to Loewe goes beyond creativity. He has built a rich and eclectic world with strong foundations in craft which will enable the House to thrive long after his departure,’ says Pascale Lepoivre, Loewe’s CEO.

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Instead of hosting a typical runway show, this season, Jonathan Anderson had something different in mind. To present his A/W 2025 men’s and womenswear collections for Loewe, the designer took over the 18th-century Hôtel de Maisons in Paris – which is set within the beautiful Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin neighbourhood, just a stone’s-throw from the Musée d'Orsay – transforming its 17 rooms and manicured grounds into a sprawling, day-long presentation for guests to explore.

Sort of like entering an Anderson Disneyland, the event was conceived as a ‘scrapbook of ideas’ by the designer, uniting his new co-ed collection alongside significant past designs and the work of several makers who have inspired him through the years. Fashion editors, friends of the brand and celebrities such as Stephane Bak, Úrsula Corberó and Jamie Dornan (who recently fronted a campaign for Loewe Perfumes) drifted through the airy rooms of the home (once the residence of Karl Lagerfeld), moving between theatrically posed mannequins and artworks selected from the Loewe art collection. Among them were Anthea Hamilton’s giant pumpkin (from the A/W 2022 show set), South African ceramic artist Zizipho Poswa’s spiky vases, and Japanese artist Yoshihiro Suda’s tender flower sculptures. ‘A scrapbook contains things old and new that are gathered at random to be preserved as memories,’ said the house of the display. ‘Mementoes fill the pages.’

Adding to the fairytale of it all, Anderson’s interest in ideas of the surreal – which have steadily deepened over the past few seasons – were on show like a curated album of his greatest hits. The super-sized apple from the brand’s Juergen Teller-shot S/S 2025 campaign took centre stage in the hotel’s drawing room, while inflatable acrobats, playfully nodding to Loewe’s jewellery collection, climbed up the banisters of the staircase. Meanwhile, a cluster of mushroom stools, originally created for Salone del Mobile 2023, sprouted from the garden grass.

The idea of the scrapbook also informed the A/W 2025 collection itself, which saw Anderson drill down into the codes and tropes he has transformed the Spanish leather house with over the past 13 years. Seamlessly blending mens- and womenswear, the mannequins – which were animatedly posed in chairs and the hotel’s corniced eaves – were adorned in the designer’s distorted scales and volumes, tactile fabrics such as leather and shearling, witty trompe l’oeil prints and dramatic, sculptural cuts. As always, Anderson’s love for contemporary art and craftsmanship took centre stage, highlighted by a special collaboration with the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation.

Josef and Anni Albers were pioneers of 20th-century modernism who fell in love at the experimental Bauhaus School in 1922. While each was influential in their own right, they shared an connected understanding of colour and form – Josef in his spacial, geometric abstract paintings, and Anni with her graphic wall hangings and pictorial weavings. Anderson pulled reference from both, translating the maddening vibrancy of Josef’s Homage to the Square series into his A/W 2025 palette, and the knobbly woven masterpieces of Anni’s 1950s textiles into his textures, felt most strongly in a series of gorgeously rich, cocooning coats.

Unfolding over a drizzly day in the French capital, the event felt like a celebration of all that has defined Anderson’s tenure at Loewe – his flair for surreal invention, breathtaking craftsmanship, and deep respect for the contemporary artists who have inspired his collections and efforts at the Loewe Foundation. Though the event reflected on the past, as people mingled and shared in the space, it was evidently just as much about being together in the present moment, too.

loewe.com

Read more Paris Fashion Week A/W 2025 highlights

Last June, British designer Craig Green opened up his London studio to show his latest collection after a two-year absence from the runway. He admitted that such an intimate show was scary – ‘It’s like someone painting a runway through your house,’ he said – but it also felt liberating. Here was the site of Green’s fashion experiments, a creative lab of endless enquiries into fabric and material; all that intricately moulded leather, the glimmering candy wrapper-like fabrics, or the various constructions designed to hang off the body like contemporary sculpture. In the past decade, these have evoked sails and lilos, medical equipment and horse-riding stirrups, even contorted dummies used for martial arts practice.

For this show, his S/S 2025 offering, Green felt like a designer in full flight, riffing on archetypal menswear garments in imaginative style: a series of ‘biker jackets’ were made in collaboration with Danish leather brand Ecco and constructed in colourful jigsaw puzzle-like layers of ‘shooting and protective patches’. The resulting pieces were strange and seductive, the result of hours of experimentation and meticulous assembly. ‘The childish idea of taking an engine apart to see how it works,’ Green said of his process, which is one of enquiry and curiosity. Walking back out of his studio into London’s Docklands – currently in its own state of reinvention, surrounded by looming cranes and construction sites – the excitement for his return was palpable.

Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025: the fashion winners

Indeed, the show spoke to a wider mood in fashion, whereby its most intriguing designers are eschewing the pedestrian in favour of experimentation and high-minded design. It is a riposte, no doubt, to the so-called era of ‘quiet luxury’ and ‘stealth wealth’ – that post-pandemic moment of stratospherically expensive cashmere sweaters and swaddling silhouettes – and a response to the frenetic, tremulous times in which we live. The resulting collections spanned the thrilling (John Galliano’s triumphant Artisanal show for Maison Margiela), the unexpected (Rick Owens’ 200-strong old Hollywood epic featuring his parading white-clad ‘army of love’) and those that mined a feeling of childlike wonder, like Matthieu Blazy’s colourful S/S 2025 outing at Bottega Veneta, which took place amid a menagerie of leather beanbag animals. ‘I wanted to feel the primal pull of fashion once more,’ said the designer. ‘The joy of looking, discovering and dressing: the power of wow.’

Our Design Award winners – which include Green’s ‘biker jacket’ and a purposely crumpled overcoat from Blazy – were also chosen for their wow factor. Transcending the everyday, they are clever, sculptural, sometimes weird; each relies on process, craft and construction. When selecting the pieces, we were in part led by the thinking behind Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ S/S 2025 womenswear collection for Prada, which the designers described as a rallying call against the internet algorithm; the way it silos us into bubbles, smoothing our tastes towards pure hegemony (‘we like things because people tell us to like them,’ said Mrs Prada backstage). Instead, they wanted to create a collection that rejected the ‘derivative and expected’ through 49 unique looks, a riot of colour and silhouette. ‘We thought of each individual as a superhero – with their own power, their own story,’ said Simons.

We’ve also rejected the derivative and expected. We were seduced by the work of Duran Lantink and Ellen Hodakova Larsson, both awarded at the 2024 LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers for their distinct viewpoints. The work of the Dutch-born Lantink – with its smooth, bulbous protrusions, like inflatables have been snuck under the surface of his garments – is bold and challenging in the way it transforms the body but remains rooted in everyday garments. He is confident that he will see them worn on the street (and his growing stockist list seems to agree). Swedish designer Larsson works with deadstock garments, turning the earnest connotations of upcycling on their head and conjuring up a surreal glamour with pieces made from discarded objects (we chose a dress made from stitched-together faux fur hats).

Other winners include Francesco Risso’s S/S25 collection for Marni, which reimagines elegant midcentury silhouettes in paper-like fabrics evoking fur and feathers, as if twisted fashion illustrations come to life. Like Blazy, it spoke of a primal desire to dress up and play, and was one of our highlights of the season. Another was Nicolas Ghesquière’s show for Louis Vuitton, which kicked off with a runway, formed from the house’s trunks, rising from the floor, its liberated mood reminiscent of high-voltage 1980s shows. The collection riffed on the same era: bold wide-shouldered jackets, flourishes of tulle, pirate-style pants, and a vibrant mash-up of print and adornment. Or the one-legged trousers, featured here, which loop cleverly around the lower body and introduce an intriguing new silhouette.

Construction is always on the mind of Satoshi Kondo, who is leading Issey Miyake into exciting new realms while retaining the pioneering spirit of the house’s namesake. This season, he looked to washi, inspired by the traditional handmade Japanese paper’s ability to fold and be shaped that reminded him of playing with origami sheets as a child (the dress we chose, with its undulating silhouette, recalls crumpled paper). Victoria Beckham’s collections also saw her experiment with forms, including a dress that saw fabric laid over twisting, wire-like rods. It’s exciting to see a designer refusing to rest on their laurels or take the easy route.

It has undoubtedly been Jonathan Anderson’s year, though. At both Loewe and his eponymous label JW Anderson, he proved his ability to shift the eye, to endlessly interrogate the way that we wear and perceive clothing. His S/S 2025 womenswear collection for Loewe featured featherweight dresses crafted over bouncing cage-like constructions, the delicate wires intricately welded together by hand, alongside elongated dress shoes, and feather T-shirts hand-painted with the work of Van Gogh and Manet, a play on ‘band merch’.

At JW Anderson, he said he wanted to intuit ‘where the next decade is going’, with a purposely reduced collection of sharply flared skirts and garments printed with extracts from an essay by British art critic and Bloomsbury Group member, Clive Bell. Anderson explained post-show that it explores ‘the idea of art and design and how they sit together’, though he elaborated that he was less interested in the essay’s content and more in ‘the modernity of text on a white page’. ‘There needs to be a narrowing of things,’ he continued. ‘[This collection] is about the idea of taking a blank page and starting afresh.’ For Anderson – and indeed the rest of the designers assembled here – the possibility of that blank white page seems endless. The question is, where next?

Find all the Wallpaper* Design Awards winners in the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands from 9 January 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Models: Awek Gak Chol at Titanium Management, Arthur Del Beato at Milk Management. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM Hair: Tobia Bartolini using Oribe. Make-up: Michelle Dacillo at Agency 41 using Laneige. Manicure: Cherrie Snow at Snow Creatives using Boy de Chanel Le Vernis and Chanel La Crème Main. Photography assistant: Michel Bewley Fashion assistant: Nathan Fox. Production assistant: Archie Thomson. Digi tech: Alexander Brunacci.

Just before men’s fashion month began this past June, Meta introduced a new tag for Instagram and Facebook allowing you to label images ‘made with AI’. It was a response, no doubt, to the bizarre ‘AI art’ which flooded the latter: anthropomorphic animals that move like humans; statues of Jesus made of stacks of shrimps or vegetables; ‘cyborg’ children engineered with empty plastic bottles and computer detritus. They have been deemed ‘slop’: a queasy and surreal stream of images made by a mysterious army of bots to mine likes and views (search: ‘weird AI art Facebook’ on Google Images to view some of these oddities).

Later that month at Prada, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons showed a menswear collection which the duo said explored ideas of ‘truth and pretence, the real and the unreal’. It made for a collection of illusions: belts that looked like belts but were actually stitched into the construction of a trouser, shirts that were warped with hidden wires, shield-like sunglasses overlaid with images of Roman statues, ravers and American highways. ‘Viewed from afar, pieces can pretend to be other,’ said the designers. ‘Details may seem simplistic, naïve, but up-close, physically, perceptions transform.’ It was fashion for our bewildering post-truth era, where nothing is quite what it seems.

Throughout 2024, designers have used their collections to grapple with designing for our increasingly disorientating world, resulting in idiosyncratic and intriguing collections which British designer Jonathan Anderson best described as ‘irrational clothing’ (he was talking about his own S/S 2025 menswear collection). The idea of the hybrid ran throughout, strange mash-ups that seemed to capture the dizzying spin of a social-media stream: at Loewe and Balenciaga garments appeared crafted from stacks of discarded clothing, at Sacai garments like the MA-1 flight jacket were melded together in Chitose Abe’s offbeat style, while at Issey Miyake sweaters appeared stitched on to the front of vests (typical of the Japanese brand’s innovative approach, they were actually knitted as a single piece).

Though it was accessories that made for some of the most curious hybrids. There was JW Anderson’s loafer bag, first appearing as part of Anderson’s S/S 2025 menswear collection in Milan, which ‘deconstructed and reconstructed in bag form’ the penny loafer (the classic shoe’s ‘whale-tail keeper’ detail runs across the bag’s boxy design, while the base recalls a loafer’s sole). Part of a collecton that was inspired by the stream of memories dug up by hypnotherapy – sweaters ran with slogans like ‘Real Sleep’ – it was both strange and familiar, like an object appearing from a dream. And, judging by a buzzy release last month, it looks set to follow in the JW Anderson ‘Bumper’ bag’s footsteps as a contemporary it-bag.

At Hodakova, the Stockholm-based winner of the 2024 LVMH Prize, eponymous designer Ellen Hodakova Larsson uses deadstock in imaginative ways. Like a series of bags constructed from discarded belts, or a surreal bag crafted from a knee-high boot, capturing an undone glamour that feels fitting for our times. At Duran Lantink’s thrilling S/S 2025 show, handbags became hats, while at Acne Studios trompe l’oeil prints saw ‘denim jeans’ printed across silk scarves and tote bags. Demna, meanwhile, melded a soft satin house slipper with towering stiletto heel at Balenciaga, while at Bottega Veneta, what appeared like a knitted wool sock was actually a woven leather shoe. Off the runway, New Balance’s loafer-cum-trainer was one of the year’s most divisive (and talked about) shoes.

These were pieces that spoke of not only the experience of living in what feels like an endless, infinite scroll of a social media stream – the dizzying juxtapositions from one post to the next – but also a newly experimental attitude in fashion as designers shift away from the quiet to the loud, no doubt buoyed by a new generation of consumers willing to make bolder statements with the clothes they wear. Indeed Anderson said his S/S 2025 collection had partly been inspired by seeing young people experiment with their outfits when he had attended Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona earlier that year. ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ he said post show. ‘The eye has changed within menswear and within womenswear. People want something that is really challenging.’

Hybrid accessories: the Wallpaper* edit

Dover Street Market is celebrating two decades of ‘beautiful chaos’. Opening its doors in London's Mayfair in 2004, the radical concept store was founded by Comme des Garçon’s Rei Kawakubo and her husband Adrian Joffe with a simple mission: to offer a shopping experience without definitions. Departments were intentionally mixed up, windows changed constantly, and visual arts institutions and creatives were invited to bring their subversive ideas into the space. Moving to the cavernous site in Haymarket below Piccadilly in 2016 – potentially an act of retail suicide that luckily paid off – while expanding to outposts in Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Paris, Dover Street Market has, over the years, come to represent so much more than a store. It's the beating heart of Comme des Garçons, a touchpoint for a global community of creatives, and an incubator for emerging design talent. Never sticking to convention and always evolving, it is above all a place where people can connect with one another and feel inspired.

Incredible displays have been a part of life at Dover Street Market since the beginning. In a practice linked to its Tachiagari turnover – where the store closes for a few days each season to be reimagined anew – everyone from Ai Weiwei to Karl Lagerfeld has been given free rein over the space. In efforts that have often kept staff working through the night, these interventions have seen Stephen Jones festoon hundreds of hats from the ceiling; artist Matt Clark sail a captainless boat through the window; and a huge wooden structure with positive aphorisms penned by Kawakubo, made in celebration of DSM’s tenth anniversary, which very nearly got vice president Dickon Bowden arrested by Westminster City Council. ‘Storytelling is not just one thing,’ says Joffe, when asked why these installations are a vital part of DSM’s world. ‘Experiences are better when deeper and wider.’

Marking 20 years of radical retail, the store has planned a carnival of displays and special releases with Undercover, Cav Empt, and more, set to be unleashed in Haymarket this week. As celebrations get underway, here Wallpaper* looks back at the most memorable installations in Dover Street Market’s history.

Two decades of Dover Street Market installations

Heaven by Marc Jacobs, 2022

In 2020, Marc Jacobs channelled his inner teenage angst into the launch of the diffusion line, Heaven. Drawing upon subcultures like grunge and rave, the youthful offshoot of his namesake label was a stratospheric success from the word go, and has since caused frenzy with rebellious collaborations alongside Kiko Kostadinov, Dilara Findikoglu, and Isabella Burley’s Climax Books. In 2022, the brand found a spiritual home in the basement of Dover Street Market, the area of the store that houses fledgling brands and where DSM’s youngest customers can access a piece of its world at more affordable price points. Brought to life by John Scharbach, the installation resembled a suburban teenage bedroom on acid, complete with a wall made from hundreds of teddy bears, a plush colourful carpet and logo neon light. No parents allowed!

Simone Rocha, 2021

After several lockdowns and a year of working, for the most part, at a distance from others, the start of 2021 marked a year of strange seclusion around the world. Livestreamed from an empty Gothic Revival church in central London, Simone Rocha’s ‘Winter Roses’ A/W 2021 collection was a product of these disjointed months, fusing the formality of school pinafores with airy, dreamlike dresses and looks of a darker mood. As ever with the Irish designer, it was about being tough and tender at the same time. In celebration of ten years of her brand, and after having to show the collection digitally, the designer decided to bring the church to Dover Street Market, where a sturdy house-like structure was erected on the ground floor. Its walls were printed with the angelic figures found in the stained glass windows of St John’s Hyde Park.

Martin Parr, 2019

Few photographers have captured the quirks of British identity as prolifically, and with such accuracy, as Martin Parr. In 2019, a retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery celebrated the seminal photographer’s enduring fascination with people, bringing together some of his most recognisable works from the past five decades with never-before-seen photographs. To coincide with the landmark Only Human show, Parr designed an installation at Dover Street Market that brought the unbeautiful charm of his images into the 3D realm. Channelling the sunburnt splendour of his iconic 1980s series, The Last Resort, the photographer brought objects of English coastal nostalgia into the store, such as a plastic Mr Whippy ice cream cone, toy capsule vending machines, and a weather-beaten wooden bench.

Hello! 30th Anniversary, 2018

Over the past 20 years of Dover Street Market, frequenters of the store have learnt to expect the unexpected. The gossipy headlines of Hello! magazine might feel like a universe apart from the conceptual beauty of Comme des Garçons, but nevertheless, in 2018, DSM had its fun celebrating the British tabloid’s 30th birthday with an installation imagined by visionary set designer Andy Hillman. Emblazoned with red and white signage that read ‘Haymarket!’, a temporary newsagent stall sold items that started at the price point of 75p, including notebooks, mugs, and bottle openers.

Comme des Garçons, 2016

Rei Kawakubo’s A/W 2016 collection for Comme des Garçons was a particularly memorable display of the designer’s genius. Sending a procession of floral warriors down the runway in exaggerated silhouettes made from rose jacquards, leather bondage, and upholstered armour, it drew upon the spirit of punks and the revolutions of the 18th century. Imagined by Kawakubo herself, an austere metal structure that resembled a temple was built in the store, under which her warriors stood proudly in formation as if ready for battle.

Loewe, 2015

In 2022, Jonathan Anderson released his viral pigeon clutch – perhaps the year’s most headline-grabbing accessory – which was made even more famous by its cameo on And Just Like That in 2023. Hardcore fans of the designer will know, however, that the Irish designer’s love for bringing animals into his surreal world stretches back some years. Before the pigeon and his frog-shaped Wellipet shoes, Anderson invented the adorable – and now mainstay – Elephant crossbody bag for Loewe, which realised the curves of the gentle giant in supple calfskin leather. To mark its release, Anderson teamed up with Dover Street Market to create a life-size elephant in cheerful technicolour stripes, which towered over 10ft tall on the ground floor of Haymarket.

JW Anderson, 2016

Jonathan Anderson created his first window installation for Dover Street Market ten years ago. On the precipice of becoming one of the most important British designers of our times, that year Anderson’s men’s and women’s collections had an architectural quality to them – all strange angular cuts and dramatic silhouettes – and he described the men he imagined for S/S 2014 as ‘columns.’ With the ancient act of building on his mind, it made sense that his debut installation at DSM resembled a town, seeing sky blue walls and turrets snake together in a conceptual city for passers-by to admire in a window adjacent to DSM’s iconic white spheres.

Octopus, 2008

The gallery-like proportions of Dover Street Market have allowed space for installations of impressive scale. The team has taken advantage of this in manifold ways over the years. One particularly playful example saw a gargantuan octopus sculpture take over a corner of the shop. Created by Les Trois Garçons back in 2009, the piece was carved by hand and finished with glossy black resin and metal disks for suckers. Its tentacles wrapped around the walls, as if the mollusc was making a move to ascend the wooden spiral staircase at the heart of the store.

Tim Walker, 2008

Dover Street Market is a place where fashion’s most inventive fantasies can be experienced and touched; where you can lose yourself for a little while in a thousand different stories told by clothes. In 2008, the store celebrated an escapism of a similar kind, marking the release of Tim Walker’s now-highly collectible book, Pictures. Drawing upon the fairy tales that have shaped the legendary photographer’s ambitious tableaux images, a human-scale wooden drummer puppet sat in the window display with a dozen hand-painted drums tumbling around him, a copy of Walker’s fashion tome sat at his feet. While it may not be the biggest or brashest project the team has pulled off, the poetic display was, however, one of the store’s most beautiful – and also one of Joffe’s all-time personal favourites.

Bill Prince, Editor-in-Chief

'The second week of November invariably means a visit to Geneva for the ‘Oscars’ of the world’s watchmaking fraternity – the GPHG, or Grand Prix Horlogerie d’Geneve. In recent years, the scale of the event has grown in tandem with the growing interest in fine and high watchmaking, with makers from Malaysia and Japan joining the Swiss-based throng at the lakeside Theatre Leman. Overseen by jury president Nick Foulkes, journalist and author of Rolex Oyster Perpetual Submariner published in partnership with Wallpaper*, top prize this year was awarded to IWC for its Eternal Calendar, able to account for irregularities in the Gregorian calendar for the next four centuries. Suddenly, ‘same time next year?’ takes on a whole new meaning.'

Jack Moss, Fashion Features Editor

'I loved seeing Jonathan Anderson’s brilliant S/S 2025 Loewe collection up close this week at a press day – it was one of my highlights of the womenswear shows this past September in Paris. It featured these incredible feathered T-shirts decorated with the works of Manet and Van Gogh, as well as portraits of Mozart and Bach, entirely painted by hand. Inspired by Anderson’s morning commute along the River Seine, where tourist stalls sell tea towels and canvases imprinted with the works of the art masters, they make for an idiosyncratic take on band merch.'

Hannah Tindle, Beauty & Grooming Editor

'On Thursday just after the sun went down, I attended the New Bond Street Christmas light switch-on. This year, the display has been designed in collaboration with Chanel Beauty. Brand ambassador Lucy Boynton performed the honours, wearing a Chanel A/W 2024 ecru and silver tweed dress, illuminating the stretch of luxury stores from Piccadilly to Oxford Circus with over 85,750 LED bulbs made from recycled aluminium. The ambience of the street now feels a little like the 2004 Chanel No.5 campaign by Baz Luhrmann, starring Nicole Kidman. (In keeping with the festive spirit, I've also now got my eye on several products from Chanel Beauty's limited edition 'Winter Tale' make-up collection).'

Hannah Silver, Watches, Jewellery, Arts & Culture Editor

'Taking a pause before Christmas celebrations seriously kick in, this week I have been slinking home early and loading up on nutritional goodness from Oxford Circus gem, Nathalie. The juices and lunch boxes are a stand-out from the usual central London fare.'

Sophie Gladstone, Photography Editor

'Meetings with photographers, agents and other creatives to get discuss potential ideas are always high points of my week. Where these interesting conversations happen varies but a favourite of mine is Toklas bakery, where this week I enjoyed a perfect danish, filled with pear and saffron. I also love their hibiscus tea.'

Ellie Stathaki, Architecture & Environment Director

'Caravan is a firm favourite for coffee in London. This week, I met friend and Piercy & Co communications manager Gwen Webber at their under-the-radar, north London roasters and headquarters in a renovated Victorian warehouse for a cup and chat. The smell of freshly ground coffee and bread from the bakery is unbeatable. It always inspires interesting conversations.'

Sofia de la Cruz, Travel Editor

'Lucky me saw Okay Kaya perform her new album Oh My God - That’s So Me at Village Underground last week. The Norwegian-American musician blessed us with her soft vocals and decisive bass sets. The rather intimate venue in east London seemed the perfect setting for what was a wholesome conversation between artist and audience. Kaya’s mischievous lullabies are invigorating, perplexing and, at times, seductive – watching it all live was an otherworldly experience. My favourite part? When the singer and songwriter awkwardly walked off stage after her final song and her microphone fell into the hands of the front row, who began to sing off her most popular track, ‘Mother Nature’s Bitch’.'

Taking a hard turn from its traditional role as the custodian of mainly 19th-century French art, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris is staging the first contemporary exhibition in its central sculpture nave. ‘L’Addition’ is an exploration of depictions of masculinity by Elmgreen & Dragset that draws on the museum’s collection of figurative sculptures, reinterpreted in new work by the Berlin-based artists. As our newsstand cover suggests (and that’s a silicone model of a small boy, by the way), it’s an audacious and, at times, disorientating undertaking, one that profitably pits the present against the past – a process discernible in work created by other artists that feature in this month’s Art Issue.

Take Rachel Feinstein, for instance. For the Miami-raised, New York-based artist, capturing the wild extremes of her hometown involves creating vast panoramas that are rife with historical rococo and gothic influences. Or this month’s Dakar Biennale, where a new generation of designers in Africa and its diaspora are showing work that links old and new – like the Marrakech-based Younes Duret’s reinterpretation of a teapot that, he says, reflects a fusion between tradition and modernity.

Our limited-edition cover features the first foray into fashion by Jony Ive’s design studio LoveFrom, which has collaborated with Moncler on a collection of jackets that can be mixed and matched with a single down-filled base layer. Here, too, the designer wrestles with the past. Ive tells our Milan editor Laura May Todd that, during the five-year development process, he ‘became obsessed with buttons. It’s an idea that is hundreds and hundreds of years old, and maybe it’s perfect, but as a designer, you want to challenge that assumption.’

Buttons; a thread: finding connections is at the beating heart of this issue, an idea brought vividly to life by the collaboration between composer Max Richter and choreographer Wayne McGregor, whom you can find in conversation in our article, and the union forged between fashion designer Jonathan Anderson and artist Christiane Kubrick (wife of the late master of modern cinema), whose work we are honoured to document in a series of unforgettable images shot at the Kubricks’ Hertfordshire manor house. Eyes wide open? Good. Enjoy the issue.

Bill Prince
Editor-in-Chief

The November 2024 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands from 10 October, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Earlier this year, Jonathan Anderson described his S/S 2025 menswear collection as one of ‘irrational clothing’ – an embrace of the strange and the unexpected, inspired by the experimental attitude towards dressing he had witnessed among young people at Primavera Festival in Barcelona earlier that summer. ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ he said at the time. ‘The eye has changed.... people want something that is really challenging.’

Anderson is astute with a soundbite, and the idea of ‘irrational clothing’ could equally have been applied to the womenswear collections shown this past month in New York, London, Milan and Paris. By and large, there was a marked disavowal of ‘quiet luxury’, seeing restraint thrown out the window in the pursuit of the bold and eclectic. If sometimes this led to a lack of cohesion – with designers seeming to ricochet between ideas – when it was done well, it made for some enlivening fashion moments. Such was the case at Prada, where Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons presented a freewheeling collection that paid homage to individual style, traversing Prada eras and comprising 49 near-completely different looks filled with colour, texture and shifting silhouettes. A similarly eclectic approach provided transporting collections from Valentino, Bottega Veneta, Loewe and Louis Vuitton, which were among the highlights of the season.

Here, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss unpacks the S/S 2025 womenswear shows, from an embrace of the eclectic to a new mood in tailoring, and clothing where nothing was quite what it seemed.

The season was an homage to individual style

A Prada show is usually a barometer for the season, such is the knack that Miuccia Prada has for shifting the fashion needle, reimagining the familiar in oftentimes electrifying new ways (now, she does so alongside Raf Simons, her co-creative director and another fashion soothsayer). For S/S 2025, a radical new proposition from the pair: the decision to do away with trends or thematics entirely, choosing instead to present a freewheeling and eclectic collection that celebrated individual style. It was a riposte, said Mrs Prada backstage, to the way that the social-media algorithm smooths personal style and siloes us into social-media echo chambers. ‘We are driven by algorithms,’ she said. ‘We like things because people tell us to like them.’ As such, the pair spoke about rejecting the ‘derivative and expected’ for a stream of 49 near-entirely different looks that veered between sculptural high-shine silver skirts dotted with enormous eyelets, leather dresses with BDSM hooks and elements of trompe l’oeil (there were also feathers, bug-like sunglasses, and day-glo anoraks). It made for an enticing visual feast, ‘a Prada for each individual’. ‘We thought of each individual as a superhero – with their own power, their own story,’ said Simons.

Also in Milan, Matthieu Blazy struck a similar mood at Bottega Veneta, which he described as an attempt to evoke a sense of childhood wonder (as such, the animal-shaped beanbag chairs were a reference to the scene in E.T. when the title character hides amid a closet full of cuddly toys). Blazy said that the collection began by thinking about a suited businessman taking his child to school while carrying their pink cartoon rucksack or lunchbox over his shoulder. The collection was full of such juxtapositions, seeing ‘Italian sartorialism’ clashed with playful flourishes, from tasselled wigs to blown-up tailoring and animal motifs. Like at Prada, barely two looks were the same, and it was a definitive statement that luxury fashion needn’t be discreet nor restrained – rather, it should spark joy. ‘[This collection] encompasses the joy of looking, discovering and dressing,’ the designer said. ‘Last season was maybe more contemplative. But at the same time, we need beauty. We need joy. We need this moment for ourselves, and continue to play.’ In Paris, Nicolas Ghesquière felt similarly liberated – his 1980s-infused collection seemed to recall the flamboyant, individual style of the New Romantics, albeit with the designer’s always-futuristic sheen – while Alessandro Michele opened his tenure at Valentino with a musing on beauty that was as richly expansive as his collections for Gucci (he left the Italian house in 2022). Over the collection’s mammoth 85 looks were hundreds of elements, among them ruffles, feathers, polka dots, floral motifs, wide-brimmed hats, facial piercings, ladylike handbags (sometimes worn two-a-piece) and ribbon-tied pumps. Again as at Prada, it was a bold invitation to experiment with clothing – a maxim that defined the season.

Designers reimagined the everyday

Despite its more dramatic flourishes, Blazy’s latest collection for Bottega Veneta was rooted in the idea of everyday style (‘everyday adventures’, is how he described the collection’s mood). As such, objects like the plastic corner-shop bag – here recreated in heat-pressed nylon – were elevated onto the runway, alongside bunches of flowers (woven from leather), brown paper bags (more leather), and shopping baskets (also leather). Such transformations were also applied to clothing: this season, he continued to riff on everyday garments like jeans, crumpled T-shirts and corporate tailoring, albeit in luxurious style. ‘I was interested in the simple acts of fashion that happen everyday,’ said Blazy. Demna, creative director of Balenciaga, is also known for taking disparate objects – like crisp packets, toolboxes and rubbish sacks – and turning them into fashion accessories. This season, though, Demna looked towards archetypal garments, like denim jeans, and radically altered their proportions (his version sat perilously low on the waist). Elsewhere, dresses looked as if a classic trench coat had been tied around the body, while padded jackets were reshaped to recall Cristóbal Balenciaga’s ‘cocoon’ silhouette.

At Issey Miyake, models carried shopping-style bags filled with bunches of flowers, as if on a trounce to the market, while Anderson’s latest Loewe show featured feathered T-shirts handpainted with works by Vincent Van Gogh, including Irises and Sunflowers. Reflecting the designer’s idiosyncratic approach, these were not inspired by encountering the paintings in a gallery, but by the reproductions he sees on tea towels and T-shirts while driving to work each day past the tourist markets that line the River Seine. ‘We get so used to them that they become a kind of high-low culture,’ he said, placing what he called the ‘burned-out’ images in a new context as an attempt to shift the eye. ‘[They are artworks] we are always magnetically drawn to... There’s something that we want to be part of, something, even if we don't understand it.’ The same can be said for Anderson’s collections for Loewe, which continue to intrigue.

There was a tailoring redux

Backstage after that show for Loewe, Anderson touched on the evolution of tailoring at the house during his tenure. ‘Historically, tailoring was something Loewe wasn’t good at for a long time, but I think we’ve been able to do it right, and come up with a kind of signature,’ he said. ‘Tailoring is about the subtlety of the change, and it’s taken me years to understand that.’ His proposition here was a tailored jacket with long, gently flared sleeves and baggy trousers that twisted cleverly towards the waistline. The result was roomy and generous, though the silhouette – a move from a relatively narrow shoulder line towards the more voluminous weight of the trouser – was one of louche elegance. It was proof that tailoring remains fertile ground for designers, something Simon Chilvers discussed in the September Style Issue of Wallpaper*, in regards to men’s tailoring. Womenswear, if anything, allows for even more sartorial experimentation, unrestrained by the still-conservative mores of men’s suiting.

Such experiments were in evidence across the various cities: in Paris, Victoria Beckham turned blazers inside out or sliced tailored trousers down the leg to expose the pocket lining, while another trouser shape sat away from the waistline through clever use of corsetry (in New York, Tory Burch evoked a similar effect on skirts). At Dolce & Gabbana in Milan, jackets were inserted with a Jean Paul Gaultier-inspired ‘cone-bra’ (an ode to Madonna, who sat front row and inspired the collection), while at Emporio Armani, the designer revived his 1980s suit and tie for women with a multitude of iterations of the blazer, including those folded sharply along their front. At Seán McGirr’s sophomore show for McQueen, jackets were cut to evoke the feeling that they were being grasped close by their wearer to protect them against the elements. Though perhaps the most seductive proposition for this season’s tailoring was that at Saint Laurent, where Anthony Vaccarello revived the languid, broad-shouldered tailoring of his menswear collection earlier this year – which was no doubt was inspired by Mr Armani’s tailoring of the 1980s – to evoke the wardrobe of Yves Saint Laurent himself, from a fluid black tuxedo (modelled by Bella Hadid who also wore the couturier’s famous thick-rimmed glasses) to beige and grey double-breasted tailoring.

American fashion was dissected

On the final Tuesday of New York Fashion Week was the first – and perhaps only – television debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Such was the anticipation there were fears that Luar’s runway show, due to take place that evening, would be underattended (it wasn’t: Madonna even made a rare front-row appearance), while those already travelling to London for the next fashion week leg made complicated plans to watch the debate while in the air (they managed, thanks to a BBC iPlayer live stream and aeroplane wifi). Which is to say, the upcoming election loomed large in New York, prompting a dissection of American fashion and what it represents – or what it could represent. Such was the case at Willy Chavarria’s latest show, which saw the designer present an homage to America’s immigrant communities, like those he grew up around in his home city of Fresno, California (Chavarria is the child of an Irish-American mother and Mexican-American father). He did so through riffs on uniforms: hotel managers, farm workers, and employees at electronics chain Circuit City, albeit in his distinct style, which instils a mood of elegance through abundant silhouettes and references to haute couture. ‘Given the time that we’re in – around the corner from a major election – I wanted to shine a light on the people who make this country work,’ he told Wallpaper* at the time. ‘It’s about giving, showing dignity to all of these people.’ Afterwards, guests were given a sticker to remind them to vote.

Other designers looked towards the history of American fashion: Tory Burch continued to reference figures like Claire McCardell, a pioneer of American sportswear, as inspiration for her breezy summer collection, while Tommy Hilfiger drafted Wu-Tang Clan to perform at his latest show, a reminder of the longtime synergy between his namesake label and hip hop music (the show took place on a former Staten Island ferry owned by the comedians Pete Davidson and Colin Jost). Sometimes it took an outsider’s eye: against the backdrop of the gleaming New York skyline in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Off-White creative director Ib Kamara staged his debut show in the city, in part an ode to founder Virgil Abloh’s American heritage. It made for a vivid, continent-swapping collection from the Sierre Leone-born designer, which celebrated America as a cultural melting pot. ‘I have vivid memories of what America, and New York in particular, represented in the collective imagination of Africans: a dreamland of utopias made real, a place of opportunities,’ he said. Also making his debut in New York was Belgian designer Pieter Mulier, who showed his latest collection for Alaïa in the dramatic spiralling atrium of the Guggenheim Museum, swapping from Paris for the season. Conjuring the easy glamour of figures like Charles James, Adrian and Halston, as well as McCardell, it was an exemplary collection that showed the rich potential American fashion history still holds for contemporary designers (it was a show that felt like it had been percolating since his exit from American powerhouse Calvin Klein, where he worked alongside Raf Simons, in 2018). ‘[This collection] is a celebration of an American ideology of dress, and through that of a spirit that can unite New York and Paris – of the body in motion, liberated,’ Mulier said. ‘As Alaïa always has been.’

Sometimes things weren’t what they seemed

Balenciaga’s S/S 2025 show began with what appeared to be lingerie, though on closer inspection was actually a series of nude bodysuits embroidered with bras, knickers and stockings for a playful visual trick. It captured a mood of disorientation which ran through the season, reflecting the menswear shows earlier this year. Back then, Anderson spoke about ‘things not being what they seem’ in his JW Anderson collection (inspired by the experience of hypnotherapy dredging up past memories), while at Prada the designers spoke about the idea of ‘truth and pretence, the real and the unreal’, a response, they said, to a world where these categories feel increasingly blurred. As such, the technique of trompe l’oeil – the illusion of one garment imprinted onto another – continued to be evoked by designers across women’s fashion month, from JW Anderson’s mini dresses decorated with faux buttons and zips, to printed fur collars and belts in-set into trousers at Prada. Meanwhile, at Moschino, simple white-cotton garments adorned with childlike impressions of trench coats and sailor’s scarves. A similarly illusory mood was conjured in pieces that appeared to have a life of their own – or, indeed lived a life already – whether purposely creased garments at Ferragamo, Bottega Veneta or Victoria Beckham, or dresses at Prada constructed with twisting wired seams. Set into skewiff proportions, they appeared to be leaping off the models’ bodies.

Revisit our coverage of New York, London, Milan and Paris fashion weeks.

Loewe and Lladró are two brands with a lot in common. They’re both Spanish, they’re both born out of an obsessive desire to master a particular material (Loewe with leather and Lladró with porcelain), and they’re both exemplars of luxury design.

So it seems fitting, then, that the two maisons have finally come together for an exceptional collaboration: a limited-edition run of porcelain flask toppers for three of Loewe Perfumes’ classic scents.

Inside the making of Loewe Perfumes’ porcelain bottle toppers, delicately crafted by Lladró

Each fragrance – ‘Loewe 001’, ‘Loewe Earth’ and ‘Loewe Agua Drop’ – has been selected to represent three different olfactory universes inside the Botanical Rainbow, the name given to the entire collection of 24 nature-inspired fragrances by in-house nose Núria Cruelles (they are recognisable for their multicoloured, block-shaped glass bottles, designed by Loewe’s creative director Jonathan Anderson).

The Lladró flask toppers are delicately shaped like carnations, Spain’s national flower, reflecting the botanical codes of Loewe Perfumes. ‘Synaesthesia is a key aspect of how I perceive the world around me, and when I see the Lladró flowers, I can imagine smells and olfactory notes in my mind,’ says Cruelles. ‘It’s a multisensory connection.’

‘001’ was the first fragrance made under Anderson’s tenure. A light blend of jasmine, linen and musk, the scent is simultaneously fresh and warm. ‘The name indicates a new start for the brand,’ said Anderson upon its release in 2016. In the Lladró collaboration, its clean, translucent flask is joined by the magenta-pink and pale blue bottles containing the ‘Earth’ and ‘Agua Drop’ fragrances.

For the former, Cruelles combined notes from above and below the ground, including mimosa, violet, pear and truffle. ‘I was inspired by the fungi kingdom,’ she said in 2022. ‘[Truffle] gives the new perfume its own personality. Its aroma makes you deep dive into nature and drives you to the purest concept of earth.’ The latter (one of the Botanical Rainbow collection’s latest additions) is a citrussy floral, where bergamot and orange flower absolute are underscored by the woodiness of the brand’s unique Loewe Accord.

With the Loewe flask tops, Lladró shows off its remarkable talent for rendering porcelain into lifelike forms. Each carnation’s serrated petal, no matter how small, has been meticulously handcrafted and individually painted inside the brand’s Valencia workshop, which can trace its history (and its production methods) back to 1953, the year the company was founded by Juan, José and Vicente Lladró. The three brothers were artists, graduates of the Valencia School of Arts and Crafts, and were keen to bring a modern Spanish perspective to the two century-old techniques pioneered by the German, French and Italian porcelain houses Meissen, Sèvres and Capodimonte.

The Spanish siblings broke away from the familiarity of ornate, rococo designs and pioneered a new aesthetic, characterised by elongated lines and a pastel colour palette. The milky appearance of Lladró porcelain is thanks to a secret paste recipe, which is still closely guarded by the family to this day.

Loewe, likewise, came from humble beginnings before rising to fame. Starting life in 1846 as a collective of leathermakers, the Madrid-based workshop was known for its small leather goods, such as wallets, purses, and cigarette and jewellery cases. In 1872, a German expat named Enrique Loewe Roessberg joined forces with the workshop, capitalising on its technical precision and imaginative vision to open a store. (A mere 20 years later, the brand would become an official supplier to the Spanish monarchy).

When Anderson joined Loewe as creative director in 2013, he spearheaded a major rejuvenation of the house. Just ten years on, Loewe is one of the most revered fashion brands in the world; one that is also steadfast in a commitment to the past, present and future of craft. ‘Craft is the essence of Loewe,’ Anderson has said. ‘It is where our modernity lies and it will always be relevant.’

Proof of this, if it were needed, is seen in emerging talent initiatives such as the annual Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, which just celebrated its seventh edition. (Mexican artist Andrés Anza was named the 2024 winner, receiving a €50,000 prize for his life-size sculpture I only know what I have seen). Loewe also frequently teams up with established contemporary artists. Past projects span from costumes made for Turner Prize nominee Anthea Hamilton’s performance piece The Squash (2018) to jewellery designed with American sculptor Lynda Benglis, whose bronze works adorned the S/S24 womenswear show space.

What Loewe Perfumes has made with Lladró is in keeping with this collaborative spirit, here merging innate references to nature with historic craft. ‘Loewe has such a strong, ongoing dedication to excellence in craft and a deep respect for its Spanish roots,’ Cruelles reiterates, adding that just 600 Lladró flasks for each fragrance will ever be made.

‘This collaboration with an institution such as Lladró perfectly reflects these values. Jonathan Anderson draws from nature for Loewe Perfumes, and Lladró has brought this to life in porcelain.’ 

perfumesloewe.com

A version of this article appears in the October 2024 Guest Editors’ Issue of Wallpaper* available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Loewe ambassadors Jamie Dornan and Sophie Wilde are the brand’s 2024 fragrance campaign stars.

Yesterday (2 September 2024) Creative Director Jonathan Anderson revealed the portrait series and film by David Sims on Instagram, which sees Dornan and Wilde, who joined as faces of the Spanish house earlier this year, bathe in Le Corbusier’s and Pierre Jeanneret’s villa, Villa Savoye, which was built in the early 1930s in the suburbs of Paris.

Watch: Jamie Dornan and Sophie Wilde in the 2024 Loewe Perfumes campaign by David Sims

Soundtracked with Mulatu Astatke’s 1970 Ethio-jazz instrumental ‘Yègellé Tezeta’, the short video opens with a gardener, wearing a pair of blue Loewe jeans, watering manicured grass outside on a warm day.

Showering the camera lens with water, it then cuts to Wilde ascending the villa’s spiral staircase. She walks into the bathroom to find Dornan luxuriating in the glass-tiled sunken bath, before taking place on its adjacent reclining bed (which famously mimics the shape of Corbusier’s LC4 chaise lounge, designed with Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand).

Loewe has described the narrative as ‘a tensity of quotidian scenes whirling together with beauty and attraction, whilst simultaneously straddling undercurrents of the natural world that seep in through the windows.’

For Loewe Perfumes, which debuted in 2016 with scent ‘001’, Anderson has looked to nature and master craftspeople as an enduring source of inspiration. So the choice of modernist masterpiece Villa Savoye, situated in a sprawling open field and lit by the movement of the sun, is a fitting location.

The 2024 campaign spotlights four scents from Loewe Perfumes’ ‘Botanical Rainbow’ and ‘Un Paseo por Madrid’ collections: ‘Esencia’, ‘Agua Drop’, ‘Un Paseo por Madrid Doré’ and ‘Prado’. The latter is one of the brand’s latest fragrance editions, taking its name from Madrid’s Museo del Prado, with notes of chamomile, clary sage, cassis and lychee.

In addition, it debuts ‘Textura’, a scented candle offering featuring three new floral scents by Loewe’s in-house nose Núria Cruelles. The aquatic and juicy ‘Mimosa’, immersive ‘Tuberose’ and bright accords of ‘Dendrochilum Orchid’ are each contained in artisanal ceramic and granite pots.

perfumesloewe.com

After 3,900 submissions and a shortlist of 30 artists from 16 countries around the world – finalists span Nigeria, Korea, the United States, Mali, New Zealand and more – Mexican ceramic artist Andrés Anza has been announced as the winner of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2024 at a ceremony in Paris’ Palais de Tokyo this evening (14 May 2024). The jury, which comprises leading names from the worlds of design, architecture and journalism, praised the totemic ceramic work on display, titled ‘I only know what I have seen’ (2023), for the way it combines the ‘figurative and the abstract’ with ’architectural intention and precision’. He was presented the award by actress Aubrey Plaza.

The piece is constructed from refractory clay and recalls organic forms with its undulating surface dotted with thousands of ‘spiked protrusions’ – whether cacti or sea anemones – and Anza told Wallpaper* he relishes how people see different things in it. ‘There is something really familiar about it, you can almost tell what ecosystem it comes from,’ he said earlier this morning. ‘But you cannot really tell, because it is nothing. I want people to feel curious about it.’ He will be awarded a €50,000 prize.

Andrés Anza wins the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2024

Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson, who began the annual prize in 2016 at the start of his tenure at the fashion house, tells Wallpaper* that each year ’brings up different questions... about the preservation of craft, different forms of craft. I think what was interesting this year was the cross-section that we ended up having,’ he says. Anderson admits the wide scope of the works it did lead to some ‘fraught’ discussions among jury members, who overshot their deliberation time by 15 minutes. ‘It gets heated because everyone has their favourite... there are people who believe in craft as being a certain type of discipline, while others see it as more exploratory and artistic.’

As such, for the first time, there were three ‘special mentions’ from the jury: Miki Asai from Japan, who creates jewellery topped with miniature vessels adorned with tiny shards of egg and sea shells; Heechan Kim from the Republic of Korea, whose bulbous ’#16’ is crafted from delicate strips of manipulated and bent ash; and Emmanuel Boos from France, who crafted a table from 98 porcelain bricks that can each be lifted from the structure individually. In its functionality as furniture, the last, says Anderson, ’marks a break from where we’ve been before, because it encompasses the idea of design as well’.

‘This year there was a lot of mixing of media,’ Anderson continues, noting a thematic thread that runs through the 30 distinct pieces, which will be displayed in an exhibition at Palais de Tokyo running until 9 June 2024. ‘[Artists were] taking two types of traditional craft and mixing them, which is something we haven’t seen before. [There was also] this continued search for the organic form; to look at object-making through organic forms rather than regimented forms.’

Anderson’s own love of craft, he says, comes from discovering ceramics as a teenager, particularly those by British ceramicist Lucie Rie. ‘I fell in love with a salad bowl that I saw in an auction and then started reading [up on] her and became completely obsessed. There was something for me about the exploration that she did within glazing and form; [it was] was something that I wished I could do.’

Now in its seventh edition, the Northern Irish designer – who continues a busy month having been honorary co-chair of the Met Gala in New York and undertaken a promotional tour for Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, on which he acted as costume designer – Anderson says that he believes the prize has stimulated a wider interest in craft across the worlds of art, design and fashion. ’Maybe I'm being biased, but I think there’s been a massive change. I used to be able to get Lucie Rie quite easily, now I can’t... I used to be able to get Hans Coper quite easily, now I can’t,’ he smiles.

Ultimately, Anderson sees the prize as a sort of ’incubator of individuals’, a ’family’ of artists that Loewe can call upon when working across different projects. This includes the recent ‘Loewe Lamps’ project, which took place at Salone de Mobile 2024, whereby previous finalists and winners of the Craft Prize were among the 24 artists who each created a lamp for the installation. ’With projects like Salone, or this exhibition, it puts the artisans forward... it’s a bridge to help people,’ he says, noting that such artisans lie at the heart of what Loewe is. ’Craft is the essence of Loewe. That’s where modernity lies, and it will always be relevant.’

The Loewe Foundation Craft Prize runs at Palais de Tokyo from 14 May – 9 June 2024.

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Unlike its burlier sporting counterparts, tennis has long been synonymous with good style – whether the bygone elegance of classic tennis whites, the nostalgic glamour of Björn Borg and his 1970s counterparts, or the more outré uniforms of the contemporary power player, from Rafa Nadal’s searingly hued tank tops, Serena Williams’ catsuits and crystals, to Naomi Osaka’s panoply of designer endorsements.

Though it is safe to say that the past few months have pushed tennis fashion deep into the mainstream, largely down to the release of film director Luca Guadagnino’s tennis romp Challengers, starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist as a love triangle on and off the court. On-screen, their tennis uniforms – from emblazoned college wear to sleek grand slam attire – looked particularly seductive thanks to the eye of Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson, who served as costume designer; on the red carpet, Zendaya served up a stream of tennis-themed looks, whether glimmering pleated mini dresses or vertiginous white heels that skewered miniature tennis balls.

And, ahead of its Cruise 2025 show in London which took place in May, Gucci revealed Australian Open champion and current ATP world number one Jannik Sinner – and his now-trademark on-court Gucci holdall – as its latest campaign star (as of this week, the Italian house also released a dedicated tennis collection). It comes as the sport is in the midst of a particularly blockbuster summer: last month, Spanish wunderkind Carlos Alacaraz won his third Grand Slam at the French Open, on Monday (1 July 2024), Wimbledon begins in London, while the Olympics in Paris will see the tennis competition held on the famed clay courts of Roland Garros.

It makes it a prime time for fashion brands to embrace the zeitgeist with tennis-inspired collections of their own. Here, from Giorgio Armani’s grass court uniform – made to coincide with the Giorgio Armani Tennis Classic which takes place at London’s historic Hurlingham Club this week – to a Challengers-inspired T-shirt from Loewe, we pick the fashion brands serving a tennis ace this summer.

Fashion brands serving up tennis style

A Gucci collection which conjures the nostalgic glamour of 1970s tennis stars

In May, Gucci announced Italian tennis player Jannik Sinner – and current world number one – as its latest campaign star (see below). Now, ahead of the arrival of Wimbledon, the house has revealed a full tennis collection which harks back to the 1970s, a decade when Gucci embraced the sport with releases like the perennial Tennis 1977 sneaker. As such, expect pieces infused with a nostalgic glamour, albeit reimagined in current creative Sabato de Sarno’s sleek, contemporary style, from pleated white tennis dresses for women and sporty polo shirts and pullovers for men, alongside the requisite accessories, including sweatbands, an updated version of the Tennis 1977 sneaker, and a racquet holder in the Gucci monogram which is guaranteed to turn heads at the country club. Each is adorned with Gucci’s signature green and red ’web stripe’ detail, while an accompanying campaign stars rising British tennis stars Emma Cohen and George Loffhagen.

Gucci’s ‘Tennis Special’ collection is available from selected Gucci stores and gucci.com.

A court-ready Uniqlo collection from Jonathan Anderson and Roger Federer

Not content with outfitting the still-ubiquitous Challengers – and creating a viral Loewe T-shirt to match (see below) – Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson has also revealed a new Uniqlo collection made in collaboration with 20-time grand slam champion Roger Federer, who wore the Japanese brand on court for the latter part of his career. First introduced in September 2023, the ‘Roger Federer Collection by JW Anderson’ combines high-tech sporting fabrications with Anderson’s eye for good design. This year’s collection is inspired by the tennis uniforms of the 1970s and 1980s (also a touchpoint for the on-court attire of Josh O’Connor’s Patrick Zweig in Challengers) and features striped-collar polo shirts, nylon shorts and V-neck marl T-shirts, alongside more contemporary technical training jackets and sweatpants. It has been a busy month for Federer – who retired in 2022 – with the enduring tennis star also starring alongside his prolific Spanish rival Rafael Nadal in a campaign for Parisian house Louis Vuitton. Anderson, meanwhile, revealed his latest Loewe collaboration with Swiss sportswear brand On with a campaign starring on-the-rise American tennis star Ben Shelton (to tie it all together, Federer is also one of On’s major investors and a brand ambassador).

Uniqlo’s ‘Roger Federer Collection by JW Anderson’ collection is available at uniqlo.com. The latest Loewe x On capsule collection can be purchased from mytheresa.com.

A Giorgio Armani collection inspired by the Hurlingham Club’s Tennis Classic

Each June, the Giorgio Armani Tennis Classic takes place at London’s Hurlingham Club, an exhibition tournament on its famed grass courts that serves as an unofficial warm-up tournament for Wimbledon (this year’s participants include Holger Rune, Frances Tiafoe, Daniil Medvedev and the surprise appearances of Novak Djokovic, a last-minute addition). Alongside the glamourous proceedings – the Hurlingham competition has become a fixture on London’s social calendar – Mr Armani has also created a capsule collection of clothing to dress the ball boys, umpires and ground staff at the event. Crafted in simple cream, deep navy and white, the louche, unfussy collection is an exercise in Mr Armani’s nonchalant design codes – epitomised here in easy, unstructured tailoring, crisp white shirting and roomy, sportswear-inspired shorts, for men and women. Completed with the circular Giorgio Armani Tennis Classic motif, the collection is strictly limited-edition – it is available at the Hurlingham Club in a special pop-up, and for a short time in Giorgio Armani’s London boutique on Sloane Street.

The Hurlingham Club collection is available at Armani’s Sloane Street boutique and at Hurlingham Tennis Club now.

A monogrammed Gucci tennis bag worn by grand slam champion Jannik Sinner

The 22-year-old Italian tennis player Jannik Sinner – who made it into a select club when he beat Daniil Medvedev earlier this year to win the Australian Open and has since been crowned the ATP world number one – has long been courted by the Italian fashion house Gucci, first attending the house’s Cruise show in 2022 and becoming an official ambassador later that year. His allegiance has been expressed with his choice of on-court tennis gear, swapping the usual sportswear-branded nylon holdall favoured by players for a custom-made Gucci monogram duffle bag, which is now available for sale. In May, Gucci revealed Sinner as its latest campaign star in a series of on-court images by Riccardo Raspa – a surefire sign of the player’s soaring profile (it also puts him on par with Spanish rival Carlos Alcaraz, who has fronted campaigns for Louis Vuitton). The nostalgic mood of the images – emblazoned with ‘Gucci is a feeling’, a slogan from a 1980s campaign – is made to capture the house’s longtime links with the sport, which included the perennial Tennis 1977 sneakers.

The Gucci ‘Maxi Duffle Bag’ is available from gucci.com (£1460) and Gucci stores.

A Brunello Cucinelli tennis capsule instilled with the designer’s distinct brand of sprezzatura

Brunello Cucinelli brings his eye for luxury to a new tennis capsule, no doubt ready to be spotted on court in some of the world’s most exclusive locales this summer. Spanning menswear, womenswear and kidswear – as well as a handful of lifestyle products, from racquet holders to tennis bags – the collection continues Mr Cucinelli’s easygoing sartorial codes, inspired by his native Italy. As such, expect sartorial riffs on the tennis uniform: whether white polo-shirt dresses with gently pleated skirts, crisp pleat-front men’s shorts, or an array of cable-knit sweaters and cardigans (in keeping with Brunello Cucinelli’s brand of sprezzatura, try draped over the shoulder or tied around the waist). A Brunello Cucinelli-branded cotton cap – complete with tennis racquet embroidery – completes the look. ‘[It’s] dedicated to those who live tennis as a lifestyle,’ says the brand.

Brunello Cucinelli's ‘Tennis Sets Capsule Collection’ is available from Net-a-Porter and brunellocucinelli.com, alongside selected stores worldwide.

A Loewe T-shirt from Luca Guadagnino’s sensual tennis thriller ‘Challengers’

Not strictly tennis attire, we know, but it does hail from Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, the erotically charged tennis movie which stars Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor as three rising tennis players caught up in a will-they-won’t-they love triangle set in the run-up to the 2019 US Open (sexual frustrations are taken out on the ball in the film’s high-octane on-court scenes). British designer and Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson was behind the movie’s costumes, including this ’I Told Ya’ T-shirt swapped between Zendaya’s Tashi and O’Connor’s Patrick as they dual it out in sport and romance. ‘As an audience, you're never quite sure who to root for, and clothes are an instrument of that,’ said Anderson, who based the T-shirt on one worn by JFK Jr. To coincide with the film’s release, Anderson has created a Loewe version of the T-shirt, as well as a sweatshirt version, in white or marl grey.

The Loewe ’I Told Ya’ T-shirt (£225) and sweater (£475) are available from loewe.com and selected Loewe stores worldwide.

A tennis-inspired collaboration between Aries and Fila which sees two worlds collide

British skate brand Aries brings its playful, subculture-infused style to a collaboration with Fila, one of the longtime behemoths of the sport, having dressed Björn Borg in his 1970s heyday (and arguably shaped tennis style forever). Shaking up the classic tennis whites, expect zip-front bandage skirts adorned with the Aries and Fila logos, striped sweatbands, and co-branded T-shirts and jackets. The idea of the collaboration was to capture a sense of ‘Italian-ness’ – Sofia Prantera is from Italy, though now lives and works in London – featuring a soft-pastel palette of pinks and greens which are faded through garment dyeing, a longtime fascination of Prantera’s that is also synonymous with Italian streetwear. Eschewing tennis’ occasionally stuffy connotations, the accompanying campaign features sibling musical duo Sons of Raphael, who scored Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla.

Aries x Fila is available from ariesarise.com.

A preppy on-and-off-court uniform from Tory Burch’s Tory Sport

American designer Tory Burch introduced Tory Sport in 2015, crediting the sporty off-shoot as the beginning of a more creative approach to her eponymous mainline label in the way it encouraged her to experiment with shape and form (‘the concept of being ”on brand” and that wasn’t interesting to me because it inhibits creativity... so, over the last five years, I’ve smashed that concept,’ she told Wallpaper* in January). Though Tory Sport runs the gamut of sporting pursuits – each piece instilled with the preppy, playful hallmarks which define the label – recent arrivals have included her take on tennis wear, a nostalgia-tinged collection of white pleated skirts, dropped-waist dresses and 1970s track jackets, some complete with tennis racquet motifs of the Tory Burch monogram. Recalling the hazy glamour of New England summers, the tennis collection is completed with the ‘Convertible Tote’, complete with a removable zip pocket with space for two racquets.

Tory Sport is available from Mytheresa and toryburch.com.

It was a series of firsts for Loewe at Milan Design Week 2024; the first time showing its design week installation in the heart of Brera at the historic Palazzo Citterio, and the first time that creative director Jonathan Anderson and all of the 24 featured artists had worked in the medium of light.

’Each season we want to tackle different things within the interior, within how Loewe can explore different possibilities within the function of interior, and for me it was something that we had never tackled,’ Anderson told Wallpaper* as the presentation got underway this week. ’I think it’s something quite beautiful, the idea of illumination within the house [and] within the home.’

Let there be light: ‘Loewe Lamps’ at Milan Design Week 2024

Many of the 24 pieces had already found a home by the end of the week, with that elusive red sticker to be seen on the majority of the works. Comprising floor, table, ceiling and installation lamps, the collection was both a celebration of experimentation and the individual, often rare, techniques of each artist.

See the spherical tower by Dahye Jeong (winner of the 2022 Loewe Craft Prize), which was created using a traditional horsehair weaving method that Jeong is thought to be one of the only artisans in the world using, or the suspending calabash fruit shells by Young Song Lee, each covered in coiled mulberry tree paper hand-rolled by Lee herself. Enrico David’s curved table lamp featuring a backlit woman’s profile was engineered from onyx and glass; and Anthea Hamilton’s kimono-inspired installation came to life through a combination of lacquered wood and privacy glass, giving the ordinary an extraordinary spin.

’Loewe’s team are willing to take a leap of faith and make anything become a reality, so why not make a kimono a lamp?’ said Hamilton, who was inspired by the Italian Radical Design movement and the creations of Gaetano Pesce for the project. ‘My lamp is for a dreamer, it is an oversized, glowing body to watch over you whilst you sleep.’

While it may have been the first time this group of artists has come together to celebrate Salone, each has worked in some form with Loewe before, including Anne Low, who won the Loewe Craft Prize in 2019, and Magali Reus who worked with Anderson in the early days of his Loewe shows.

‘Loewe Lamps’ was not the only event staged by Anderson during Milan Design Week. A few blocks away, off Via Montenapoleone, a collaboration with the American artist Patrick Carroll for his eponymous brand JW Anderson was unveiled (it was staged in JW Anderson Milan store, which opened in 2023).

‘Days’ with Patrick Carroll at JW Anderson, Milan

Entitled ‘Days’, the event featured 37 works by Carroll, who stretches fabrics he has knitted onto wooden bars to appear like canvases, each of which features a quote, a message or a word derived from the central theme of queer art of the 20th century.

‘Some of them name paintings, like Boys Do Fall in Love, [by] Patrick Angus (1984) and there's one that is a quotation from a Derek Jarman journal. So in part, it's kind of trying to construct a narrative or a sensibility of a historical study,’ Carroll told Wallpaper*.

Carroll and Anderson have worked together once before, for Anderson’s first Milan catwalk in June 2022, where models wore Carroll’s knitted outfits to welcome guests to the show.

’I think that for each of us, it's pretty evident what we admire in each other's work,’ Carroll continued. ’Which is primarily an investment in art and the history of art and a desire to continue that history on.’

‘Loewe Lamps’ is on view at the Palazzo Citterio, Milan, until 21 April 2024.

‘Days’, an installation showcasing Patrick Carroll’s artworks, is on view at JW Anderson Milan now.

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Hot and heady days on the Balearic Isles inspire Loewe Paula’s Ibiza, a yearly collection which arrives in time for summer and captures the destination’s mood of near-spiritual escapism – one particularly personal to Loewe’s British creative director Jonathan Anderson, who has been making a regular pilgrimage to Ibiza since first coming with his family as a child. 

First introduced in 2017, the capsule collection – which comprises clothing, accessories, and, more recently, fragrances – takes its name from seminal boutique Paula’s Ibiza, which was first opened by German-born Armin Heinemann in 1972 and came to encapsulate Ibiza’s Edenic, bohemian spirit. Anderson reached out to Heinemann about the project in 2016, and it was released a year later. ‘Different generations have escaped here in a quest for personal freedom, making the identity of the place richly layered,’ Anderson told us in 2022. ’Each summer Loewe Paula’s Ibiza allows me to explore one of these layers.’

Loewe introduces the 2024 Paula’s Ibiza collection

Revealed today in a Gray Sorrenti-shot campaign – the American photographer has been a longtime collaborator on the Paula’s Ibiza project – the 2024 collection sees Anderson return to the fertile inspiration point for a typically colourful and carefree summer collection which he calls a ’playful wardrobe’ made for warm-weather days in ’the city or on holiday, for music festivals and summer strolls around town’. Each of the eclectic pieces is infused with ’Loewe’s unmistakeable sense of ease, and distinctive craft.’

An equally eclectic cast of characters populate Sorrenti’s accompanying campaign, including Saltburn’s Alison Oliver, musician Kevin Abstract, Taeyong, originally of K-pop group NCT, singer-songwriter Yebba, Puerta Rican trap star Young Miko, and New Jersey artist 070 Shake. Loewe says the various faces were chosen by Anderson to encapsulate the 2024 collection’s ’carefree, laidback’ spirit.

As such, expect shimmering sequinned capri shorts, trippy slogan tees (’Do You Remember When We First Met’, reads one) and slouchy stonewashed jeans, alongside and array of prints, from rolling dice and swirling planets to the Loewe anagram and blooming botanics (floral prints have been synonymous with Paula’s boutique since the 1970s). Meanwhile, accessories include colourful daisy-adorned heels, Loewe-branded caps and beanies, bejewelled sunglasses, and of course the requisite array of woven raffia bags, including new iterations of the Puzzle and Puzzle Fold tote, made for the beach (for every basket bag sold, Loewe will make a donation to the local communities who handweave them).

Completing the line-up is the launch of the latest Loewe Paula’s Ibiza fragrance, a ’hypnotic’ scent for men and women that the house says is ’suffused with playfulness, fun, and experimentation’. The juicy, fruity fragrance sees notes of pear and mango combined with cypress resin, while sweet coconut cream and vanilla – reminiscent of the scent of aftersun balms and lotions – are tempered by cedarwood, sandalwood and amber. Created by Nuria Cruelles, it is completed with tones of the Spanish rockrose wildflower, which blooms in the Mediterranean from April to June, heralding the start of summer.

Loewe Paula‘s Ibiza collection and Cosmic fragrance are available from April 18, 2024, from Loewe.com and Loewe stores. Sign up for an alert at Loewe.com.

As the year comes to a close, the Wallpaper* fashion and beauty team share their personal 2023 fashion highlights – from the blockbuster spectacle of Pharrell Williams’ debut at Louis Vuitton to cascading curtains of slime at Prada. These are style moments of 2023 that will stick with us.

2023 fashion highlights: as picked by the Wallpaper* team

Jason Hughes, fashion and style director

There was something about Matthieu Blazy’s latest Bottega Veneta show – S/S 2024,  – show that I felt like captured a particular mood, one of fantasy and imagination, the way that fashion allows the mind can travel. Set on a tiled map of the world which stretched across the space’s floor (complete with illustrations of penguins, sardines and crabs), Blazy imagined his protagonists on a journey around the globe – ‘an odyssey: a journey that is both free and hopeful... internal, physical and through the imagination,’ as he described. It made for a satisfying roll-call of travel archetypes – the beachgoer, the businessman, the castaway – each one rendered through his incredible expressions of craft. I loved it, and as ever there was plenty to desire: chief among them the vast woven beach bags which opened the show. 

I’ve been a fan of the American artist Lynda Benglis for some time, so it was exciting to see Jonathan Anderson collaborate with her at Loewe: first, her enormous fountains provided the show set for his S/S 2024 menswear show, then, for his later womenswear show he also collaborated with her studio on sculptural pieces of jewellery evocative of her works cast from manipulated pieces of clay (which also lined the runway). As ever, he used the inspiration point to create some of the year’s most intriguing collections, which largely focussed on an extraordinary now silhouette – super high-waisted trousers worn with shrunken shirts or knitwear – which he described as looking through a fish-eye lens or looking upwards at one of Benglis’ towering fountains.

Finally, nothing beats John Galliano’s Maison Margiela shows: held in the all-white showspace on the upper floor of house’s new Paris headquarters and complete with stomping models – and equally stomping soundtrack – it’s a true fashion rush.

Jack Moss, fashion features editor

2023 might well have been the year of spectacle, a mood encapsulated by Pharrell Williams’ menswear debut at Louis Vuitton – undeniably the most blockbuster runway show (or indeed fashion happening) I’ve ever attended. For a start, most do not require the boarding of a boat to get to the venue – guests were shuttled down the Seine before the show’s start – nor do they require the full-scale shutdown of a Parisian landmark (Pont Neuf, the city’s oldest bridge, here gilded gold for the occasion). And, while they do usually attract a handful of stars, Williams’ presence ensured an altogether stratospheric guest list – among them Beyoncé, Zendaya, Meghan Thee Stallion, Tyler the Creator, Kim Kardashian and (many, many) more. Post-show, Jay-Z staged a live performance; my own personal highlight was finishing the evening dancing feet away from a heavily pregnant Rihanna.

A different kind of spectacle at Prada – always a highlight of my fashion season – whereby dripping Alien-like cascading curtains of slime interrupted the otherwise sparse stainless-steel set in the house’s Deposito showspace at Fondazione Prada in Milan. At both the house’s menswear show (which happened first), and the womenswear show later in the year, the trick was enough to elicit audible gasps from the gathered audience. It provided the backdrop for two standout collections by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, the menswear show an exploration of ‘fluid forms’ – tailoring was cut with the lightness and ease of a cotton poplin shirt – while the womenswear collection melded featherweight diaphanous gowns with ladylike silhouettes and extraordinary expressions of craft (from eyelet-studded tassels to intricate embroidery). ‘We tried to make the best out of our work, to make beautiful things, for today,’ said Mrs Prada in her typically succinct style. ‘That may sound banal, but it is the truth.’ 

Elsewhere, I enjoyed young British menswear designer Aaron Esh’s sleek, confident London Fashion Week debut which riffed on the dress codes of his own group of friends – set against the London skyline on an upper floor of the Tate Modern’s Blavatnik Building, he said it was an ode to the city in which he grew up, and later studied. My final highlight goes to Matthieu Blazy at Bottega Veneta. It goes without saying that his collections are extraordinary in their expressions of craft and design, but I want to particularly shout out his equally extraordinary – and always poignant – soundtracks. After his A/W 2023 show, I listened to Donna Lewis’ ‘I Love You, Always Forever’ on repeat.

Hannah Tindle, beauty and grooming editor

Mia Goth opened the Miu Miu A/W 2023 show in February this year, which was titled ‘Ways of Looking’ (a sideways glance at John Berger’s 1972 essay, perhaps). She was styled by Lotta Volkova in pieces befitting of Mrs Prada’s subversively sexy take on a bookish aesthetic. With a charcoal button-up twin set, strappy patent pumps, a leather box bag carried nonchalantly in the crook of her arm, and black, low denier tights – the gusset of which was pulled up above the waistline of a low-slung, sheer polka dot pencil skirt – Goth looked as though she had just rolled out of bed in a hurry, and in being late for a lecture at the Sorbonne, had left her sleeping lover behind. Guido Palau created intentionally unkempt hair, using the static electricity from balloons and a can of hairspray to sculpt strands into frazzled quiffs. Later in the lineup, tiny rounded tortoiseshell spectacles worn by the likes of Rianne Van Rompaey completed the fantasy (and I have been thinking about it ever since).

Daniel Lee’s obsession with green seeped through from his tenure at Bottega Veneta into Burberry’s new direction for S/S 2024. However, for the sophomore collection at the British heritage label, Lee put a trademark stamp on a deeper variation of the shade; a hue that is in part reminiscent of a mallard head (duck motifs are also on the designer’s mood board) and one that also recalls the verdant foliage of British scenery. Held in a tented structure erected in London’s Highbury Fields, the show space was laid with moss-coloured carpet, which carried over into the clothes, make-up and even nails. Ammy Drammeh took care of the former, where glossy, lacquered lips appeared black at first glance; upon a second, a tint of green was slightly perceptible. The same custom colour was applied to fingers and nails, by session manicurist Ama Quashie. Would I try and recreate this rather swampy makeup look on myself? Probably not. But I loved the strangeness of it nonetheless.

Earlier in 2023, it was announced that British designer Jonathan Anderson – creative director of Loewe alongside his eponymous label JW Anderson – would unite with Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino (a former Wallpaper* Design Awards Judge, and behind Bones and All; Call Me by Your Name; A Bigger Splash) on costumes for the latter’s next movie. Titled Queer and starring Daniel Craig, it is an adaption of Beat author William S Burroughs’ 1950s-penned novel of the same name, which began filming in April.

Released today (15 June 2023), ahead of the movie and in anticipation of Anderson’s menswear show for Loewe, to be held on Saturday 24 June in Paris, is a short film from the pair that previews the S/S 2024 collection. Titled I Dreamt of Loewe, the film is set in the David Zwirner New York gallery amid pieces from the Franz West exhibition ‘Echolalia’, which ran earlier this year (9 March – 15 April) and featured the Austrian artist’s colourful rock-like sculptures. 

Luca Guadagnino and Jonathan Anderson unite on Loewe film

Across its two-minute runtime, the collaborative film features models Andrea Isidori, Elliott McDean, Malick Anderson, Bruno Krahl and Adrians Smats, who find themselves in a psychedelic trance among West’s works. It begins with Isidori falling asleep on a sofa before waking up nude, and the model experiences visions of the rest of the cast dressed in the S/S 2024 runway collection, which includes (at a brief glance) contrast-collar shirting, polo-neck sweater, wide-leg trousers and jeans, crossover cardigans and an array of crystal-adorned sunglasses.

’The hallucinogenic vision reaches a bass-thumping crescendo; transfixed by the sculptures and dressed in the new S/S 2024 runway collection, [the models’] uncanny poses highlight the season’s elongated silhouettes, tactile fabrications and crystal-embellished sunglasses,’ says Loewe of the film, which can be watched below.

The S/S 2024 men’s runway show will take place at 12pm CET on 24 June, 2023 in Paris, and can be live-streamed on loewe.com 

Stay tuned to Wallpaper.com for more from Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2024.

On a sweltering afternoon last June, Jonathan Anderson took over a former industrial warehouse on the outskirts of Milan to show his Spring/Summer 2023 menswear collection for his eponymous brand, JW Anderson. Outside, models lounged on plinths; inside, the collection shown was an idiosyncratic ‘crash’ of influences and elements, from Rembrandt self-portraits to bicycle frames. Later in the evening, he took over a neon-lit Milanese nightspot, Teatro Principe – previously the Discoteca Tropicana – where guests danced long into the morning. 

It signalled the beginning of a more permanent relationship with the Italian city for the British designer, who is primarily associated with London – where he has traditionally shown his JW Anderson collections – and Paris, where Loewe holds its seasonal runway shows (Anderson is creative director of the Spanish luxury house alongside his own label). In January 2023, he returned to Milan to show his Autumn/Winter 2023 JW Anderson menswear collection at another warehouse space in the city; this week, he opens the doors to a store in the Quadrilatero – Milan’s traditional shopping district – which marks his first outside of London for the brand and second JW Anderson store overall (the Soho store opened in early 2020, just prior to the pandemic).

Jonathan Anderson on his new Milan store

‘I love Milan because they love fashion,’ Anderson tells Wallpaper* of his decision to open in the city. ‘There’s a heightened curiosity and an appreciation for fashion in a way that’s very different [from other places].’

Located at 16 via Sant’Andrea – neighbours on the prestigious shopping street include Bottega Veneta, Miu Miu and Chanel – the single-storey 53 sq m store is divided over two rooms in a design by London-based 6a Architects, who previously ‘authored’ the JW Anderson Soho store (‘they’re fantastic, great architects – they understand and really grasp my visual language,’ says Anderson). A neon-lit signage – originally created as an ode to Soho nightlife – provides a visual link between the two stores, though Anderson says each outpost’s design is reflective of the city it is in.

Here, this means riffing on hallmarks of 20th-century Italian design – ‘the JW Anderson lexicon spoken in a Milanese inflection,’ as the notes on the store’s design read – particularly through the use of terrazzo which extends across the floor and is inset with the brand’s anchor motif. ‘The elements of Milanese design really factored into the materials we used in-store; it was very considered,’ he explains. ‘Particularly the amazing floor we installed. It’s really special because it’s almost a chequerboard effect – where it breaks up into different sections, but all rendered in terrazzo.’

Scaffolding-inspired fittings, like those found in the Soho space, provide a feeling of juxtaposition, while walnut-fluted panels and hanging curtains lend intimacy and warmth. Various pieces of furniture and artwork are placed ‘sparsely’ around the space, each chosen to reflect the feeling of entering a Milanese ‘salotto’ (salon). A ‘Cardinal Hat’ pendant light by Lutyens Furniture – a playful design made to evoke the headwear worn by Roman Catholic cardinals – hangs in the main space, while Mac Collins’ Iklwa chair and matching side tables for Benchmark Studio ‘nod to a [the] salotto with their imposing presence’. Artworks include a duo of oil paintings by Chinese artist Hongyan and images by German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, the latter hanging in the fitting rooms.

‘For me, art is always going to be a language, it’s what I love,’ says Anderson. ‘I’m always discovering things I’m fascinated with or curious about. So designing a store, that’s the personal part. To me they’re just as important as a show, if not more – because they need to last. I enjoy the process, and being involved in every decision down to the door handles. The furniture, the lighting – every aspect I choose to include.’

It fits with a growing renaissance of bricks-and-mortar retail which has seen a slew of new and refurbished openings from both established houses (the blockbuster renovation of Tiffany‘s flagship in New York; Chanel and Gucci in Los Angeles) and independent labels (Tekla’s first ever store in Copenhagen; Aries debut store in London’s Soho). ‘Since the pandemic, the store experience has become more and more important for brands,’ says Anderson. ‘It’s an extension of the brand within a physical space and it’s a nice window into a brand. It allows people to engage on a different level.’

‘There’s this relationship in a store that forms between the brand and the audience – and in a way, the store becomes a window to me,’ he continues. ‘It’s more embracing. It can explain what you’re about, your inspirations, and tell your story.’

JW Anderson Milan is found at Via Sant'Andrea, 16, 20121 Milano MI, Italy.

jwanderson.com

If Loewe’s creative director Jonathan Anderson has a knack of predicting the next cult craze – and he does – then it’s time to acquire a Welsh stick chair.

‘Usually for me, there’s something I’m into, and then it suddenly becomes a thing,’ laughs the designer at the opening of the fashion house’s Milan Design Week 2023 installation in Milan’s Palazzo Isimbardi, surrounded by 30 of the wooden seats that have been transformed by expert weavers around the world.

‘Obsessed by their incredible design’, the designer himself has been collecting the structures for the last 15 years and estimates the current count to be around 20. When it came to thinking of a theme for this year’s Design Week, they were an obvious choice. 

‘Loewe Chairs’ at Milan Design Week 2023

‘I started to think about how we can use them as a canvas, fusing the past and the present and looking at design in a different way,’ he explains of the project, ‘Loewe Chairs’ (one of our favourite fashion happenings of Milan Design Week 2023). It has resulted in materials including leather, wool, shearling, paper and foil intricately entwined around the bars, arms and legs of rare examples that Anderson and his team sourced from auctions for the show, as well as from the Carmarthenshire-based specialist Tim Bowen. Eight new Lloyd Loom chairs were made by the Belgian company Vincent Sheppard.

Drawn to the chairs’ domestic simplicity, Anderson says he cherishes knowing that something has been made by someone and has a purpose as opposed to exalting an industrial design object.

‘There’s something emotional when you sit on something and you use it,’ he explains, citing Kettle’s Yard founder Jim Ede as having a big influence on his appreciation of functional objects. ‘It’s this idea of how do we engage with things? How do we look at art? How do we touch things? Why do we buy craft? Why do we use it? I like things that are functional because then I think they become a part of you.’

The project gave Loewe the opportunity to work again with many of the artisans it has collaborated with in the past and promote their skills. Galicia-based Idoia Cuesta, who has worked with the brand on previous Milan Design Week projects, was one of the artisans who worked on the stick chairs woven in silver and gold foil derived from emergency survival blankets and cords of leather, which took 40 and 50 hours to complete respectively. ‘My passion is to study different materials and to experiment with new weaving techniques and I think the art of weaving brings beauty to the structure of these chairs,’ she tells Wallpaper*.

Anderson says that since he views his role as creative director as ‘ultimately [about] curating things that I have to sell you’ he decided to use that approach to help promote people in the process.

‘Loewe is not a taking process, it’s give and take and that’s what I love about this project,’ he says. ‘The silent craftsman is one of the most elusive things; these individuals we work with, we hero them and we talk about them, but it’s not because they are a name – that’s not what it’s about. It’s about saying, this person is a discovery for you.’

With craft in its various forms finding increasing favour with fashion brands, credibility is key to creating something meaningful, says Anderson.

‘If there is authenticity, then great. I think sometimes it can get a little bit sanitised,’ he says. ‘For me, you have to love craft and it’s not just about saying “we craft a bag”, it has to be a holistic thing. I think that’s what we’ve tried to do over the last ten years and why we built the Loewe Craft Prize, because using the human hand to make things ultimately [requires] a scholarly approach and you have to dedicate yourself to it.’

As for more crystal ball predictions, early 18th-century British woodwork and furniture is on Anderson’s radar. ‘I feel like it’s really undervalued,’ he says. ‘My challenge at the moment is how do I take that by pairing it to make young people enjoy it? There’s so much of it in Britain. I haven’t figured it out yet, but it’s about how do you twist it and display it and articulate it to switch the lens on it.’

loewe.com

Loewe has collaborated with photographer Tyler Mitchell to celebrate the launch of its new fragrance project, Botanical Rainbow.

The collection sees Loewe’s classic rectangular fragrance bottles reimagined in a technicolour colour scheme, with a different hue applied to each of the 28 different botanically-inspired scents.

When they are placed next to each other, the bottles create a rainbow that ranges from strawberry red to emerald green, sunshine yellow and more before finishing off in an off-white tone. 

Nature is a reoccurring influence for Loewe – see the pansy covered pieces in the Joe Brainard inspired A/W 2021 collection for a recent example – particularly when it comes to their fragrances. Last year, the brand debuted its first home fragrance range with scents influenced by creative director Jonathan Anderson’s own vegetable garden. 

To celebrate this new chapter of Loewe fragrance, the brand has once again collaborated with celebrated photographer Tyler Mitchell. Mitchell’s still life images are suffused with a painterly light that lends an almost dream-like quality to their depiction of perfume bottles alongside Ikebana floral arrangements. 

As always, Loewe’s visual references are carefully considered and the inclusion of Ikebana, the Japanese art of floral arranging, highlights the project’s celebration of nature.

I have always found the idea of senses being used as a stimulus to healing very interesting,’ Anderson told Wallpaper* last year, ahead of the home fragrance launch. ‘There’s always been this thing with nature, that we draw on what we have around us, we associate smells to different things, it’s very personal.’

In a time when we could all perhaps use a bit of healing, Loewe’s sweet-smelling fragrances offer some olfactory escapism and their rainbow bottles a light-hearted bit of visual relief. 

INFORMATION

perfumesloewe.com

Bringing the fresh scents of the outdoors in, Loewe’s new line of home fragrances is inspired by the vegetable garden at creative director Jonathan Anderson’s London home. The collection features candles, rattan diffusers, soaps and room sprays in 11 plant-inspired scents, including tomato leaves, cypress balls, pea, coriander, and cannabis. 

Since taking the helm of the Spanish house in 2013, Anderson has championed modern craft, and this appreciation extends to the presentation of the new line. The home fragrances are housed in handcrafted ceramic containers that evoke the elegant simplicity of Ancient Greek drinking vessels, and come in a variety of colours from striking black to powder pink. The packaging, an artwork in itself, features bold still-life photographs of plants from Franco-Swiss photographer Erwan Frotin.

Below, Anderson speaks more about the inspiration behind the line and his own gardening practice.  

W*: Why did now seem like the right time for Loewe to branch into home fragrance?

JA: I already had in mind to create candles and add an olfactory dimension when I first joined Loewe. I have always found the idea of senses being used as a stimulus to healing very interesting. There’s always been this thing with nature, that we draw on what we have around us, we associate smells to different things, it’s very personal. 

How did you come up with the idea of vegetable and plant-inspired scents?

Smells trigger memories and for me the selection of smell is quite personal. I remember as a child we had a greenhouse and we grew vegetables in it, so there’s a few smells from the collection that remind me of being a child, others that remind me more of journeys I’ve taken, a bit like olfactory sketches. Smells are quite grounding in a way. Part Victorian, botanical garden, part apothecary, the mix is both scientific and sentimental.

Can you speak more about the process of designing the ceramics? How did you take the inspiration of Greek drinking vessels and transform them into objects for a modern space?

Tactility is key for me, as Loewe’s ongoing engagement with the art of ceramics testifies. The ribbed terracotta pot that holds our candles is based on a 5th century BC Greek mug I bought at an auction several years ago. In the rhythmic purity of this incredibly old object, I find unquestionable modernity, and function: it offered the perfect template as a container for our candles, which come in three different sizes. A classic Louis XIV-era French ambeau informs the geometry of the other candle base: craft knows no historic border for me. Speaking of which, candles are made with wax derived purely from natural ingredients and embossed with the Loewe monogram and the message ‘Made in Spain’.

During your tenure at Loewe you’ve championed the power of craft to transform spaces, and I imagine the past few months of lockdown have seen you spend more time at home than you have before. Has spending so much time in one place taught you anything more about the role craft plays in making a home?

When we went into lockdown, on the first two weeks I was like ‘why do I have all this stuff.' This is the longest I’ve ever been in this house because I am usually back and forth from Paris so that was the first time I had solid time in the house. I went through a complete rejection for all the pieces that I collect and then I asked myself why I am into this, why do I collect these pieces, this textile or painting or these ceramics, and it’s because of my obsession about people that make things, from start to finish. The people that make things with their hands are the people that inspire me. 

In some ways, the slow-pace and often solitary act of gardening makes it so different from fashion design, yet both are creative pursuits. Has your practice of one informed the other in any way?

With the garden you have to look after it and the same with design. You have to look after it. In gardening also there is always something that stands from it, a colour, a structure versus a non-structure. 

INFORMATION

perfumesloewe.com

Spanning fiction, photography and craft, these page-turners are sure to keep you entertained and educated, and will also heighten your understanding of the eclectic world of the founder of JW Anderson and creative director of Loewe.

Paul Thek: Diver, A Retrospective – Lynn Zelevansky & Elisabeth Sussman

Jonathan Anderson dressed his S/S 2020 and A/W 2019 menswear show spaces with artworks by Paul Thek, and owns a group of 1970s bronze sculptures by the American artist. This monograph accompanied Thek's first US retrospective at the Whitney Museum in 2010. 

Queer – William S Burroughs

Penned in 1952, this short novel wasn’t released until the 1980s. Autobiographical, but written from the perspective of William Lee, it documents life as an American expatriate in Mexico City. 

Less than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis

Ellis’ 1985 debut novel documents the cultural and social disillusionment of privileged college student Clay, who returns to his Los Angeles home for winter holidays, and experiences a range of shocking encounters involving sex, drugs and death.

The Adventures of Constantine Cavafy – Duane Michals

In this 2007 volume, the renowned American photographer uses grayscale images of human interaction, to loosely illustrate the works of twentieth-century Greek poet Constantine Cavafy. A stack of books about Michals sit in Anderson's study at home.

The Crafts in Britain in the 20th Century – Tanya Harrod

This book accompanied ‘The Pleasures of Peace: Craft, Art and Design in Britain from the 1940s to the 1960s’, which opened at the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia, UK in 1999. Surveying a range of disciplines, from ceramics to silversmithing, it provides an expansive introduction into Anderson’s obsession with craft

Information

jwanderson.com
loewe.com

The glowing neon signage that wraps the front of JW Anderson’s newly minted flagship makes it somewhat camouflaged in its gritty Soho surrounds. Perched on the corner of London’s Brewer and Wardour streets, a ‘Las Vegas' amusement arcade sits directly next door while a jumble of tattoo parlours, adult bookshops and numerous Soho walk-ups sit happily next to frozen yoghurt cafes and busy coffee shops in the surrounding streets. It’s only on closer inspection, when you look through the store’s tall glass windows that it becomes apparent that this particular shop is not quite like any of its neighbours.

‘It hasn’t really hit me that we’re finally opening a store after 12 years of doing this,' reflects Jonathan Anderson looking around the space in disbelief. ‘But in a weird way it feels like exactly the right time.'

Anderson, who moved to London in the noughties to attend the London College of Fashion has a longstanding love of the neighbourhood and singled it out as the perfect location for his first bricks and mortar store.

‘When I first moved to London, I would eat in Soho every night,' he recalls. ‘I would go to Maison Bertaux (a famous cake shop on Greek Street) and there was an amazing woman there who would always say, “you can’t sit there” when you tried to sit down, because there was some other customer who always sat there. It actually reminded me of where I grew up in Northern Ireland because you’d be told the same thing in the local pub. So to encounter that in London, which is one of the biggest cities in the world, was kind of comforting.'

The Victorian building that the flagship occupies previously housed two separate stores on its ground floor, one of which was a corner shop, that, according to Anderson, was the ‘go-to place' for late night cigarettes. The stores were divided by a typically narrow Soho entranceway that led to flats above.

The new 1,300 sq ft interior, which is spread across the ground and basement level, is designed by London practice 6a, and like the neighborhood itself, cleverly blends glossy new finishes with references to the building’s not-so-polished past.

The brief, Anderson reveals, was non existent, but having already worked with 6a on his career-defining show, Disobedient Bodies, at The Hepworth in 2017 he was confident that the architects had an innate understanding of what he wanted.

‘What we had done at the Hepworth was kind of a rehearsal,' says architect Tom Emerson, who set up 6a with his wife Stephanie MacDonald after they graduated from the RCA in 2001. ‘We had got to know Jonathan and knew what he liked.'

‘In Mayfair your job is to stand out and to outdo your neighbours, but in Soho you just need to blend in. It’s an area that holds a lot of memories and people are fiercely loyal to it, so you have to do something that joins in and participates in the neighbourhood.'

‘So we started this project by asking, "what happens when you place JW Anderson into the Soho environment and which parts of that environment we interested in keeping?"'.

One of the most notable retained elements is the strip of chequerboard flooring that runs across the store’s ground floor linking with a series of steps that trace the location of the building’s former walk-up hallway. The original tiles and stair were ripped out before they could ask for them to be preserved, Anderson informs, but these are near identical replicas.

The stairs are now used as display shelves for JW Anderson’s Converse collaboration and the tiles create a dividing line across the interior, clearly indicating where the former shops used to be separated. The Wardour street shop space is bright and lined with glossy aluminium shelving, polished stone floors and immaculate white leather seating. Meanwhile the Brewer Street space where the corner shop used to sit is full of shelving and cabinets made from faux wood formica and brass trim. Blue vinyl tiles line the floor while the original patchy paintwork covers the ceiling.

Emerson notes that elements such as the Formica are a nod to the distinctive interiors of local cafes and bars from the 60s, 70s and 80s where faux materials were all the rage. Likewise, the fluted aluminium used on the facade nods to the Italian cafes that once populated the neighbourhood.

‘This abrupt contrast is also present in Jonathan's work, which is also why we wanted to translate that into the interiors,' explains Emerson.

Past the cash desk towards the back of the space, a set of stairs covered in plush cream-colored carpet edged with incongruous strips of bright yellow nosing lead down to a more intimate basement level. Here fabrics hang behind leather-wrapped rails that display JW Anderson’s menswear and womenswear collections. Contrasting with the sumptuous carpet and fine leather detailing, the basement’s original alcove has been refinished with a rough textured plaster that Emerson describes as ‘how you might finish a London basement that you would never expect anyone to see'.

One of Anderson's key references for the project was Kettle's Yard art gallery in Cambridge, which Emerson says is an example of a ‘very British idea of cultured modernism'.

‘You’re discreet but also very knowing,' he explains. ‘There are things you are connected to, but you’re not going to show off about it. Somehow Soho is not unrelated to this idea. So in a sense there wasn’t a brief for this project, but there was a place.'

For Anderson, the collaboration has been a rare chance to take a back seat in the creative journey. ‘I think as a creative, you naturally become a bit of a control freak, and what I’ve really enjoyed about this is being able to take a step back and enjoy the process.'

Going forward the space will be more than just a showroom. JW Anderson will host workshops, readings, exhibitions on ceramics and art, as well as events with the wider Soho neighbourhood. ‘It's going to be a snapshot into the brand,' says Anderson. ‘As much as everyone is consumed with the online experience, it's still important to have a physical space. It's kind of like porn somehow,' he compares with a laugh. ‘Everyone can get porn online but they still come into Soho. Everyone can get fashion online but they will still come into Soho.'

INFORMATION

jwanderson.com

ADDRESS

JW Anderson
2 Brewer Street
London, W1F 0SA

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Jonathan Anderson has started small for his first hotel design project. The Loewe creative director and founder of JW Anderson has crafted a new one-bedroom hotel, Ruinart Hotel 1729, that opens today for just two weeks in London, following its inaugural iteration in Primrose Hill last year.

Located on one of Notting Hill's imposing residential boulevards – whose black iron railings and white-brick facades remain centuries unchanged – the townhouse looks like any other on the avenue; bar an out-of-sequence house number on the gate – ‘1729'; the year French champagne maison Ruinart was founded.

Deceptively bijou, Ruinart Hotel 1729 comprises just the one bedroom suite (which, granted, stretches the entire first floor), an open-plan family kitchen, formal living room, pretty courtyard garden, and roof terrace. The homely space allowed Anderson the opportunity to intimately express his working process and design ideals in the most personal of ways. To which end, he chose to fill it with beautiful art, tableware and furniture from his own home and personal collections, picking pieces that resonate with him and the French champagne house alike. The choices result in part from a recent trip Anderson took to Maison Ruinart, marking the designer's first time in the Champagne region, where he was inspired to learn more of the etiquette of eating, drinking and living at the time of Ruinart's inception.

A heavy door opens onto a sunshine yellow entrance hall (which is Pantone's Traditional British Stately Homes colour); where an impressive stack of Dutch Delftware plates, chargers and vases mosaic the wall in blue and white. They demonstrate how Holland was influenced by (and imitated) the Oriental style in the mid 18th-century – a fashion which was also exported to France and England during Ruinart's 1700's genesis.

Also in the hallway, an oversized wicker basket from 2018 Loewe Craft Prize nominee Joe Hogan sprouts spring blooms. Anderson previously commissioned Hogan to make several pods, which were displayed at the Loewe S/S 2019 show.

The living room mantelpiece clinks with a clutch of precious glass boots, fronted by a pair of rare Anglo-Japanese Rosewood coffee tables, one of which boasts foraged shipwreck ceramics – barnicles and all. Meanwhile, an abstract 2017 Martin Belou mobile gently rotates in the corner, signifying Anderson's deft ability to match the antique seemlessly with the new; or as he phrases it, ‘nostalgia and contemporary innovation'.

‘We are now in the moment of recycling, which I love,' he continues. ‘There is a romance to glass, and other things that are second hand – and the same goes for champagne.' Of which, a history of antique champagne flutes scales the kitchen wall downstairs, in a tower of exceptionally rare tazzas, sweetmeat dishes and jelly glasses. One only hopes the dinner parties don't get too raucous.

Perhaps the piesta-de-resistance is the tableware; a personal joy of Anderson's. For the settings, he was inspired by the 1735 Jean-François de Troy painting Le Déjeuner d'Huîtres, (The Oyster Lunch), which sees a group of French noble folk supping on mountains of oysters, discarding pearl-like shells across the floor. ‘I’ve been interested in the etiquette of eating ever since I was a child, so when I saw this painting, I thought… we do not live like this anymore, but there is something in the conceptualism of eating in this style today.'

The extravagant table dressing somehow reamins true to Anderson's unique form of minimalism, offering an intriguing way of valuing antiques in contemporary settings. More Japanese blue and white ceramics pile high, alongside English and Irish Regency period cut glass jugs, ice buckets and water bowls; which represent the height of 18th century sophistication when ice would have been an absolute rarity.

Blessing the tableware is head chef Luke Selby (previously of HIDE fame), who has developed a luxurious menu filled with treats (zestily-dressed oysters, buttery salmon with crisp apple scales, and charred duck breast) to complement a cellar of Ruinart wines.

With just one King-sized suite up for grabs; only 20 guests will have the opportunity to fold themselves in Ruinart Hotel 1729's floury Irish linen. However each evening, the residents can invite up to eight friends for a dinner party to remember – 18th century debauchery included. (Hide the Delftware).

INFORMATION

ruinart.com; jwanderson.com

Loewe has just revealed the 29 artists shortlisted for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2019. It’s the third edition of the global competition that was conceived by creative director and keen craft collector Jonathan Anderson in 2016 to promote and honour contemporary craftmanship from around the globe in all its myriad forms.

This year, over 2,500 submissions from over 100 countries (a YOY increase of 44 per cent) were reviewed by a panel of nine experts, who convened in Madrid for two days to ‘identify the most outstanding works in terms of techinical accomplishment, innovation and artistic vision’. As always the finalists hail from far reaches of the globe, although there are a notable quota of 10 representing Japan, eight are UK-based and there are four from Korea.

A jury composed of 11 leading figures from the world of design, architecture, journalism, criticism, and museum curatorship, including Anderson and also Jennifer Lee, winner of last year's prize, will select the winner from the shortlist.

Each year the announcement of the winner takes place in a different city. Last year’s ceremony took place at London’s Design Museum and for the inaugural year the announcement and exhibition took place in Loewe's home city of Madrid. This year the jury will travel to Tokyo and the prize of 50,000 euros will be presented to the winner on 25 June at the opening of the Loewe Craft Prize 2019 exhibition, which is being held at Isamu Noguchi’s indoor stone garden ‘Heaven’ at the Sogetsu Kaikan in Tokyo – a suitably tranquil setting in which to enjoy the rich diversity of hand-hewn works on display.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the Loewe Craft Prize website

‘It’s one day of the year when I don’t feel like a fashion designer,’ says Loewe’s creative director Jonathan Anderson, of the whistle-stop visit he will make to Miami tomorrow in time for the opening of Design Miami (5-9th Dec) and Art Basel Miami Beach (6th-9th Dec). ‘I love the city. It’s exotic, completely opposite to British culture.’

Not that Anderson comes entirely uninvolved. At the Loewe store in the Design District, an exhibition of ceramics by Ian Godfrey, woodcuts by Andrea Buttner and textile works by Anne Low will be unveiled – the fourth in the brand’s Chance Encounters series. And Anderson has not only been partly responsible for the curation of the show, but is also one of its major lenders. A significant number of the pieces by Godfrey come from his own collection.

Anderson instituted this annual exhibition when the store opened in 2015, clearing the space of product for the entire Art Basel week. In 2016, it showed the work of British ceramist John Ward, the first practitioner that Anderson had began to collect seriously ten years ago, particularly his elegant black and white hand-built pots. ‘They’re incredibly sculptural and painterly,’ says Anderson, who spends a lot of time placing work. ‘Potters have different languages, but they’re objects and it forces you to arrange them, to create groupings. You have to build a lot of shelves!’

Anderson also set up the Loewe Craft Prize in 2016, as part of his strategy for the Spanish house’s future. ‘When I first got the job at Loewe five years ago, I was very enthusiastic about being part of LVMH,’ he says, ‘but when I got there, I thought what does luxury mean today. I realised six weeks in that this brand is older than everyone living and grounded in skill and understanding materials. You need to communicate that, to build a cultural brand. We fundamentally make bags, and have done for 200 years, but I wanted to talk about that without it being nostalgic.’

Rumour has it that this year’s Craft Prize winner, Jennifer Lee, know for her cool, unglazed vessels, is already being courted by some major name art galleries for representation, suggesting that the involvement of the fashion house is also bringing a particular level of attention to those it chooses to spotlight.

Andrea Buttner’s woodcut prints include timeless figures, currently on show at Chance Encounters

Back in Miami, the chosen artists’ work crosses times and traditions; the exhibition’s title, Chance Encounters, suggesting some unexpected dialogues might emerge as it shares the space. Buttner’s uses the centuries-old technique of woodblock printing to explore both her own role as an artist in today’s society as well as time-honoured issues of humility, shame and religion; the two timeless figures of the beggar and the diver continually and restlessly wandering through her imagery.

Meanwhile Anne Low has learned 18th-century weaving techniques, but uses them to make sensual new work. (One series was installed at the JW Anderson menswear show in Florence in 2017.) Here she has transformed the 18th-century Spanish granary that sits in the Miami store – a delightfully erroneous presence in what is north America’s newest city – with layerings of hand-woven silk pillows, mattreses and bolsters, using the stone structure as an unlikely armature for her creations.

It is possible, though, that Godfrey’s curious ceramic creations will be the star of the show. Since he died of AIDS in 1992 aged 50, his work and reputation had all but disappeared, with a revival of interest in his work occurring only recently. ‘I have become obsessed by him,’ says Anderson. ‘The story is compelling, but also the work, which is different from what was coming out of the UK at that period.

Ian Godfrey is a personal favourite of Jonathan Anderson’s, some of the ceramic works are from the designer’s personal collection

Indeed Godfrey trained under Hans Coper and Lucie Rie at Camberwell Arts School, a star pupil who chose to reject his mentors composure and rigour for extraordinary decorative works inspired more by votive pieces and predynastic clay forms from China and the Mediterranean, than 20th-century British modernism. He made small boxes filled with shelves and drawers that opened with flower handles, like ceramic cabinets de curiosités; crazy clusters of blossoms and animals and architecture; a barrel filled with clattering ceramic balls. All were worked on when nearly dry with a pen knife and a ballpoint pen to scratch patterns into the surface, then finished in a thin glaze.

‘His work appeals to all ages,’ says Anderson, who especially loves the ‘Anxiety Balls’ barrel. ‘Children are fascinated by it. There’s the historical referencing but overall there’s a surreal quality. I’ve got a teapot that looks like a mound of sand with a tortoise for a lid.’

Whether Anderson will have time to do any shopping of his own in Miami remains to be seen. ‘I managed to buy a piece by Liz Manor, a Canadian artist, a couple of years ago,’ he says. A pile of beautifully coloured blankets cast in resin, they were destined for a spot at the end of his bed. ‘That’s the idea anyway, but the house is still a curatorial mess,’ he laughs, and rushes off to get his flight.

Follow more live highlights from Design Miami here

INFORMATION

‘Chance Encounters’, is on view until 31 January 2019. For more information, visit the Loewe website

ADDRESS

Loewe
110 NE 39th St
Miami
FL 33137

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

In a bid to open itself up to alternative narratives and bring in new audiences, the UK’s Hepworth Wakefield is launching a series of shows curated by creative forces in other fields. The first opens this month. Entitled ‘Disobedient Bodies’, it is curated by Jonathan Anderson, the designer behind JW Anderson and creative director of Spanish leather goods house Loewe.

The Hepworth’s chief curator Andrew Bonacina hopes these alternative viewpoints will create fresh ways of navigating the collection. He chose Anderson as ‘he has often spoken about his love of Hepworth’s work and many other British artists, such as Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Lucie Rie and Hans Coper’. He adds, ’Jonathan has a very curatorial approach to bringing disparate things together in a way that’s expansive and promiscuous.’

Anderson, who had access to more than 5,000 works from the museum’s collection, homed in on Hepworth and Moore’s early works, at the point where they began to push the figurative towards abstraction. Anderson himself is interested in how abstraction may be read as a form of disobedience, whether in art, in his own fashion or that of other directional designers. According to Bonacina, ‘it’s about the confrontation of the form and where it goes’.

Anderson’s idea is to create a series of dialogues between works of art and fashion. The link is the human form in whatever way it’s represented. Think of pairings such as Naum Gabo’s Head No. 2 (1916), a loan from the Tate, and a Comme des Garçons A/W 2012 dress; Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure (1936) and a Jean Paul Gaultier conical-bust dress from 1984; and Dorothea Tanning’s Nue couchée (1969–70), also from the Tate, and JW Anderson jumpers from S/S 2017. ‘Culturally, we grade things: on fame, how good they are or on price,’ says Anderson. Such pairings aim to dissolve aesthetic hierarchies by presenting art alongside fashion and photography.

‘Disobedient Bodies’ also features Jean Arp’s S’élevant (1962); Constantin Brâncuşi’s Prometheus (1912); Louise Bourgeois’ Echo VIII (2007); and Alberto Giacometti’s Standing Woman (1958), sourced from private galleries and public collections, including the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and Anderson’s ‘favourite place on the planet’, Kettle’s Yard at the University of Cambridge.

For Anderson, ‘fashion is about the body, and art is about an emotional interpretation of the body’. For the show, he has chosen work by designers such as Helmut Lang, Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo, as they are, in his opinion, ‘the most influential in terms of how they changed form’. Another pick is a Ligne Profilée dress from Christian Dior’s 1952 collection, with its padded hips; Anderson says it’s ‘just like art’, sitting off the front of the body, like ‘a 3D building’.

The show is installed across four of the temporary exhibition galleries. The first room is a giant scrapbook of stories and narratives, or a kaleidoscope of influences, a mass of imagery which traces the form of the body through art, design, fashion and photography. Bonacina believes the studio-style display will help establish the narrative of the exhibition, creating a coherent dialogue out of unexpected objects. Think of it as a giant moodboard, anchored by Moore and Hepworth. Anderson hopes this will let visitors understand his own design process, as he builds a collection, drawing out a thread to get to an end point. He doesn’t see himself as a fashion designer, as he is not classically trained. Instead, he is constantly researching, be it at a flea market, on the internet or on Instagram. He collects countless visuals and ideas and mixes them; his original creative direction is how these are edited and used.

The exhibition installation has been conceived with Stephanie Macdonald and Tom Emerson of London’s 6a Architects, whose projects include the extension to the South London Gallery; Raven Row, an art gallery in Spitalfields; the façade of Paul Smith’s Albermarle Street store; and Juergen Teller’s studio in west London.

To understand the concept behind the installation in the two principal galleries, Macdonald and Emerson suggest imagining ‘a cocktail party where people are thrown together, paired up slightly uncomfortably, and forced to make small talk with people they don’t know’. The conversations are organised and divided by fabric curtains hung in a grid, with slow variations of colour giving private space to each conversation, yet allowing a glimpse of the next ‘conversation’. Here among the art and fashion there are chairs such as Gerrit Rietveld’s ‘Zig-Zig’ and Eileen Gray’s ‘Non-Conformist’. As Emerson puts it, ‘if there is one object that specifically talks to the body, it’s a chair’.

The fourth gallery, at the heart of the exhibition, is devoted to knits. According to Tom Emerson, this space will become an interactive forest of ‘super jumpers’, all especially commissioned, supersize versions of the elongated sweaters shown in Anderson’s S/S 2017 men’s catwalk show.

Anderson’s starting point for the exhibition was Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure (1936), paired with 2015 photographs by collaborator Jamie Hawkesworth, in which models were fully covered in knitted sheaths from the JW Anderson line, the body turned into sculptural forms. Suspended from the ceiling, some of these sweaters will be 8m long. The idea is for visitors to wear them and become sculptures themselves. For the Instagram generation, this is the selfie room, where you may end up resembling a reclining Moore or Isamu Noguchi’s 1951 ‘E’ lamp shown in the other gallery.

Anderson wanted to address the distance between exhibit and visitor in the gallery context. Barbara Hepworth always said her work needed to be touched, although that’s not currently permitted in today’s conservation-conscious art world. Each night the Hepworth produces a daily ‘touch list’ of visitors who disobey the rules: now the disobedient become part of the show.

As originally featured in the March 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*216)

INFORMATION

‘Disobedient Bodies’ is on view until 18 June. For more information, visit the Hepworth Wakefield website

ADDRESS

Hepworth Wakefield
Gallery Walk
Wakefield WF1 5AW

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Jonathan Anderson has a passion for craft. An avid collector himself, the fashion designer and creative director of Spanish house Loewe is raising awareness around artisan skills with a new international foundation prize, the Loewe Craft Prize.

The venture, submissions for which opened last year, recently saw over 4,000 entries whittled down to 26 finalists. Anderson was not alone in the decision making process; he appointed a star-studded jury that includes Patricia Urquiola, Naoto Fukasawa, and Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic.

The entries span ceramics, jewellery, textiles and furniture from across the globe – with a mix of well-known and newer names, all of whom have shown a way with craft that is innovative and technical. Nodding back to the creativity inherent in Loewe’s leather craft, Anderson tells Wallpaper* that the finalists have created 'something you look at and you can tell that no-one else is operating in that way. It feels like someone has taken a material and articulated it in a way you haven’t seen before, or it is a twist on tradition.’

These refined forms include conceptual vases by German designer Ernst Gamperl and UK ceramicist Sara Flynn, intricate metal designs from Belgium and origami-style paper dexterity from Mexico. ‘Every culture has a craft background,’ Anderson adds.

It isn't just Anderson's passion for craft that led to the inauguration of the prize – the importance of artisanal work, he says, runs deep. ‘When we live in a 24hr digital landscape,' he explains, 'we forget we have to touch things, there is an emotional part to it, we become desensitised.’

Keeping this in mind, the judges now face the hefty task of choosing a winner, to be revealed on 10 April in Madrid. All of the finalists will have a moment to shine with an exhibition in Madrid, followed by one at Chamber Gallery in New York, and then a Tokyo iteration in the winter months.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Loewe Craft Prize website

At Art Basel Miami Beach last year, Loewe brought together four major British artists for the launch of its Miami Design District store. A year later on, the second iteration of 'Chance Encounters' sees the brand's creative director Jonathan Anderson marry the work of the late Irish artist William McKeown and British ceramicist John Ward. ‘I just find them mesmerising, [McKeown's] pictures,’ said Anderson, who had just paid a visit to the Rubell Collection. Anderson paired McKeown’s paintings with the vessels by Ward, who Anderson has been a fan of for years.

Anderson, who collects work by both of the artists, filled the platform of the massive granary which doubles as the retail space’s centrepiece that pays homage to Loewe’s Spanish heritage, with a number of Ward’s pots. One series featured graphic black and white patterns various vessels, while another group of his works had a natural ombré finish. The way Ward pours, paints and sprays the finishes of the vessels makes for a soft, gentle finish.

McKeown’s hazy, abstract ombré paintings, which bring up the work of Mark Rothko, lined both sides of the Loewe space. The colour palette, which contained greys, blues and yellows that seem to fade into darkness and light, complimented the Loewe handbags and accessories displayed in the boutique.

At the rear of the store, Cloud Cuckoo Land, a wallpaper by McKeown that featured a whimsical, yet haunting pattern of grey birds with a leashes tied around their neck necks against an orange backdrop. In the middle hangs a lone greyish blue, grey and cream ombré painting by McKeown.

The exhibition of the two artists, which runs through March next year and was made possible by the Loewe Foundation, created a seamless interaction between the works. ‘It’s like a conversation piece, and I think the dialogue between the two is incredible,’ said Anderson.

INFORMATION

’Chance Encounters II’ is on view until 31 March 2017. For more information, visit the Loewe website

ADDRESS

Loewe
110 NE 39th St
Miami

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The opening of a new Casa Loewe in Madrid is a homecoming of sorts for the Spanish house. Despite the brand’s country of origin, the store is Loewe’s first Spanish flagship, and has been remade in line with the retail concept which creative director Jonathan Anderson has introduced since his appointment in 2013.

Anderson applied his characteristic attention to detail to the landmark 19th century building, which sits on the corner of Goya and Serrano streets in the capital’s Salamanca district.

‘It is about reconnecting to where Loewe is from,’ says Anderson. ‘It makes complete sense for us to have an incredible store in Madrid.’ Spread over three floors connected by a floating spiral staircase, the nearly 1,000 sq m space is monumental indeed, housing every aspect of the Loewe universe.

A cream-coloured Spanish limestone floor coalesces with neutral wooden fixtures and rugs, that serve as a backdrop for cultural artifacts which Anderson has hand-picked.

British art – a Sir Howard Hodgkin print, and a Jim Partridge and Liz Walmsley sculpture, for instance – shares the space with a ceramic Windwall installation by the Madrid artist Gloria Garcia Lorca. In the Constance Spry-inspired flower shop, Edmund de Waal's ceramic vessels are also on display.

In the following two months, Loewe will host public events throughout the city, to celebrate the house’s iconography. Madrid’s Botanical Garden envelops visitors with an immersive, collage-like exhibition, 'Past, Present and Future', which juxtaposes imagery and objects from across Loewe’s 170-year existence.

Understandably for such an epic time-span, the accompanying book could not be condensed in any way. Edited by Luis Venegas, who spent months sifting through the archive, it’s a hefty 600-pager full of one-of-a-kind material, some of which the world has never seen before. ‘It’s quite subjective,’ Venegas explains. ‘It’s not about making clear, linear connections. It’s just our favourite side of Loewe.’

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Loewe website

ADDRESS

Casa Loewe
Serrano 34  
28001 Madrid

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Since LVMH appointed Jonathan Anderson as creative director at Loewe in 2014, the plaudits have landed thick and fast, as the thirtysomething from Magherafelt in Northern Ireland has taken the once-staid Spanish luxury brand and given it an infusion of cool.

Having reinvented its men’s and women’s fashion lines and begun to revamp its retail spaces, he has now turned his attention to perfume – potentially the biggest earner of them all. Anderson’s concept for 'Loewe 001' is clear enough. ‘The name indicates a new start for the brand,’ he says. ‘Loewe has done perfumes since 1947, but this is the first time perfume and fashion have been combined.’ Indeed, up to now Parfums Loewe has been a separate company, with its own separate website, and it’s easy to guess that Anderson has been itching to integrate the two. Developed in collaboration with Parfums Loewe’s in-house perfumer, Emilio Valeros, 'Loewe 001' comes in two versions, '001 Woman' and '001 Man', bucking the current unisex trend. Both are stylish scents, designed to complement each other.

‘I wanted the perfumes to be on the tipping point between masculinity and femininity,’ says Anderson, ‘so you could wear your girlfriend’s perfume or she could wear yours.’ Anderson is a relative newcomer to the world of scent (he still references 'CK Crave' as a personal favourite – ‘the one with the guy with long hair and the amazing body’), and where '001' really scores is in its design. The simple, restrained bottles have ash-wood tops, and the elegant boxes, by regular Anderson collaborators M/M (Paris) with paper from James Cropper, cleverly open like books, decorated with beautiful botanical photographs by Karl Blossfeldt.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Loewe website

Photography: William Bunce. Set design: Bryony Edwards

An impeccably trimmed bonsai tree positioned centrally in the entry the Loewe Paris headquarters on rue Bonaparte hinted that Jonathan Anderson’s spring/summer men’s collection for the Spanish brand might be channeling Japan. And indeed, from the robotic characters illustrated on the faceted leather 'Puzzle' bag to the mirrored spaceship patches adorning linen uniforms, the designer fused a decidedly playful spirit with the brand’s innate pursuit of craft. The large format book containing collection images, once again shot by Jamie Hawkesworth, underscored the dynamic juxtaposition - which Anderson described as ‘Bruce Lee in a bullring.’ 

From one end of the presentation space to the other, from a Goofy sweatshirt to an 18th century Japanese screen, he gives Wallpaper* the inside track on how this highly inspired collection came to life…

Wallpaper*: How did you arrive at this particular Japanese influence?
Jonathan Anderson: I wanted something that ultimately [explored] how you reflect tradition in the modern day - how these two things coincide and live alongside each other. If you think a classical building and a modern building or the young person and the old person, how do they correlate and work together? Where is modernity found, is it from the past or the future? And so I had this idea of snapshots and questions. I didn’t want to look at a Japanese reference in a cliché way.

You hardly design in clichés. And anyway, Japanese culture naturally embraces the push-and-pull of past and future.
Yes, also, my thinking here was how do you ultimately harness craft and how do you articulate it in a way that does not feel nostalgic. And I think in my work - even my own brand - I’ve always been influenced by Japan.

Does the space always look like this?
The tables are always like this and then we change the materials each time. So this time it’s all mirrors and black floor. And then there’s the idea of showing the modernity that can be found in history of Japan that is still relevant today.

The mirrors around the room seem like a contemporary nod to Japanese screens.
The screen at the far end is from Japan circa 1730s. We got it from a dealer in Hong Kong; it came from the countryside and would have been on the outside of a building with a veranda. I think the modernity in something like that is the benchmark. That’s how high you have to go.

What are the models wearing here?
This is our second Spring/Summer collection; so for me, the focus was linen and how you position linen in a luxury context. I wanted eclectic, talisman patches; some are laser-cut leather with chain. Then I tried to find newness in leather, no matter how big or small. The bag is de-embossed and then there’s foam behind that gives the relief pattern. This pajama-style top is in kangaroo. We’re playing with the codes that we’ve already been building and animating things as we move forward. The business is primarily a bag business but I’m trying to establish the fashion language within it.

Are you trying to shift the positioning of Loewe?
 Ultimately, it’s a brand that has to compete and has to be relevant each season. So it’s important that it’s refreshed and no one knows where it’s going. I think that’s the excitement. For me, it’s a new brand.

New Loewe ads are ubiquitous in Paris right now. It feels like the city is being hit with the brand - in a good way.
That’s the whole point. Yes it’s for press, but fundamentally, it’s to try and break down the rules of in terms of who receives the information first. So it’s about taking information directly to the consumer. And they experience it at the same time.

You’ve included another young Steven Meisel self-portrait into the mix.
We did it last season with him kissing [model Sean Bohary]. Stephen has become a major collaborator; I couldn’t do it without him. I wanted something that showed him in a personal light and I wanted to show a creator who’s human.

These puzzle bags with all their graphic detail will define the season.
I love that about fashion - when you buy something that represents that moment. I think I live for that part of it. I like that you associate things with a certain period but that when you come back to it, it’s a different thing.

'I like the idea that people today are so culturally aware that everything that goes into their homes matters as much as each piece of clothing,' explains Jonathan Anderson, musing on his pragmatic approach to designing Loewe and the ingenious curation of objects and heritage that goes along with it. Unveiling his first menswear garment and accessories collection to editors at the label's Paris HQ on Friday, Anderson discussed the painstaking process of salvaging its scattered archives whilst injecting his own JW Anderson touch.

Among his raw and minimalist ideas for the Spanish house - which include a celebration of leather in its untreated, natural state - he spoke about Javier Carvajal, the Spanish architect responsible for Loewe's mid-century store design and clean, Modernist image. With new stores rolling out worldwide, starting in Tokyo this summer, Carvajal's spirit is returning in a myriad of ways, not least of which a re-edited 1959 chair in walnut and leather latticework already available on the brand's website.

For S/S 2015 inspiration, Anderson filed through back issues of Vogue Italia, only to develop a fixation on a 1997 Steven Meisel shoot of beachside boys and girls inspired by the work of painter Alex Katz. 'I'm inspired by fashion imagery and I am not afraid to show it,' says Anderson, divulging how those pictures quickly became the cornerstone of his entire collection.

He has republished them alongside new work by Meisel and longtime JW Anderson collaborator Jamie Hawkesworth to form the season's multi-layered visual campaign, shot in studio and on location in Càdiz, southern Spain. It is there that Anderson's python espadrilles and cotton-lined, turn up trousers find their spiritual home - invoking the utilitarian, coastal ease of fishermen wading in the salty shallows.

Another train of thought, and one more akin to his own Britannic roots, saw Anderson reflecting on children and their building blocks, an idea that informed the cut-out Meccano cogs and sprogs adorning shoes, knitwear and leather goods, and the bright red, blue, green and yellow that pops from the warm, earthy leather base. 'I used Meccano as an abstraction; I thought about the formula a child would use to rebuild something, and that primary colour palette,' explains the designer.

While retro, kitsch ideas like that are a welcome graphic shake-up for the brand, it is the luxury leather that will be seducing shoppers unfamiliar with Anderson's avant-garde bent. The washed nappa trench and goatskin polo shirts are feats of 21st century decadence - their concept intangible at first glance, fading far from significance at first touch.