Jonathan Anderson, creative director of Loewe for the past decade, would leave the firm according to today's headlines, something that fashion rumors have been hinting at for months. The 43-year-old from Northern Ireland has been responsible since 2016 for defining the creative strategy of the brand, elevating it to the pinnacle of fashion.
During his 12 years at the helm of Loewe, Anderson has managed to turn the Spanish house into one of the most dynamic and avant-garde brands in the fashion industry. Commercial observation has been focused on activating its creative muscle in each collection. Due to the rapid contagion speed of the internet, the public, as he explained to WWD in 2013 after his appointment, gets tired of trends quickly. "If a bag takes over you, it's a problem. [...] Things must seem real. The more fake they look, the more detachment the product will cause. Today's customer needs novelty. Fashion has changed and continues to change because people get bored more quickly. When you see it, you want to buy it." According to the Lyx Index, Anderson has achieved his purpose: last year he was crowned as the most desired brand on the list. He had surpassed Prada's miniskirts and Miu Miu's quilted bags.
Agility became the ink of his signature from the start. At the helm of Loewe, Anderson has kept an eye on virality and another on the reverence for the brand's characteristic craftsmanship. With him, surrealism has intersected with nostalgia, androgyny, and artistic reflection. On the runway, the aesthetics of 90s gaming have disintegrated into oversized sweatshirts, and references to pop art and Japanese culture have defined his seasons. In his exploration of design limits, materials such as wood or pearl shell have been reformulated to shape handmade pieces, like the corsets worn by Taylor Russell at the 2024 Met Gala or Nicole Kidman during the promotion of Babygirl.
During his time at Loewe, cinema has also become one of his creative tools. Anderson has collaborated twice with Italian film director Luca Guadagnino to create costumes for Challengers and Queer, starring Zendaya and Daniel Craig. He has also worked with British actor Harry Styles, with whom he has collaborated personally on several occasions, and through his own brand with Uniqlo, expanding over a decade a playful universe that has hooked the desires of different generations.
The British Fashion Council has frequently celebrated his creativity. Since 2012, Anderson has taken home nine awards from the institution, both the award honoring emerging talent and the one celebrating the most outstanding men's and women's fashion collections internationally. In 2024, he won again.
Anderson's aesthetic spirit has been shaped, as he often recounts, by the clash between his memories in the British Isles and the Balearic Islands. As a child, the designer spent long periods in Ibiza, where his parents, a rugby player and a high school teacher, had a summer house. The vibrant colors of Ibiza, filled with turquoises, greens, and the pink of bougainvillea, have now tinted his more recurrent color palette. The playful character of Ibiza and its changing forms are also hinted at in his patterns, which usually do not conform to the boundaries set by fashion. The Anglo-Saxon spirit seeps into his creations through subtle and tireless humor. References to art history, including details inspired by the works of Roy Lichtenstein or Johannes Vermeer, have been consistently presented on his runway, which also tends to host his observations on life in big cities.