At Loewe, creative director Jonathan Anderson is in his reductionist era. The brand’s autumn/winter 2023 menswear collection continued Anderson’s investigation into the foundations of clothing that began two season ago—stripping them back into the most purest forms and then tweaking them into sculptural creations.
For Loewe’s autumn/winter 2023 menswear collection, Anderson drew inspiration from the works of Vietnamese-American artist Julien Nguyen who uses copper and vellum as the base for his paintings, and traditional media while referencing Renaissance paintings as well as, curiously, science fiction. It’s this combination of incongruent elements that drew Anderson to take on more non-traditional fashion materials and techniques to construct the autumn/winter 2023 menswear collection.
Parchment, velvet, copper, steel, leather, satin, and wool became the media of choice—referencing the sort of materiality found in Renaissance paintings. In order to shape them into somewhat wearable clothes, these materials had to be essentially frozen. Through moulding, bending and sculpting, each sculptural piece in the collection—namely the knits, T-shirts and coats—were almost suspended in time. Every crease, drape and fold were intentional and caused each garment to be completely stoic on the body of models.
Special mentions go to the the steel jacket in look 26 and the vellum (animal skin or membrane) T-shirt in look 30. The former looked as though it was crafted from a piece of brushed patent leather, while the latter looked like an ordinary T-shirt, except that it produced this wet-look effect. And because the material had to be stiffened, the opening of the T-shirt had to be designed at the back with studs so that the clean, T-shirt façade could still be achieved in the front. Genius.
There was also the continuation of creating boots inspired by ready-to-wear. The first iteration of this was in Loewe’s autumn/winter 2022 womenswear collection where the brand’s Flamenco silhouette was interpreted into boots. This time around, boots were crafted with denim-like waistbands to achieve a puddling effect.
Anderson’s Puzzle shape—a design that he initiated during his first stint at Loewe—too was given a brand new update. Compared to the rigid, structural shape of the original, the Puzzle tote bag is slouchy and soft, looking almost like the starting point of a Puzzle bag.
View the full Loewe autumn/winter 2023 menswear collection in the gallery below.
