Jonathan Anderson ranks as one of a handful of talents in fashion who could be considered a “designer’s designer” for the way he wakes up, changes and challenges the eye with his exacting silhouettes, far-flung cultural references and exciting concepts.
For spring 2025, it was an exercise in “radical reduction,” but without skimping at all on imagination, whimsy and craft.
Pieter Mulier, Sarah Burton, Nicolas Di Felice, Adrian Appiolaza, Pharrell Williams and Kris Van Assche were among those crowded on crescent-shaped benches at Loewe on Friday morning to watch Anderson thrust hoop skirts, floral prints and concert T-shirts into the 21st century.
Thanks to more twists and turns than the rollercoasters at Cedar Point, Anderson’s hoop dresses were a wonder to behold, the silk georgette drifting over delicate cages. After the show, he explained that hems were weighted with very fine chains to encourage undulations.
“The fabric is like floating off the garment. So you have the structure, but then you have this idea that something is in movement,” he explained in the usual post-show scrum. “So you get this body moving, or the body looking like it’s hovering somehow.”
During a vintage trawl, Anderson discovered some “very strange” American crinoline set from pre-war times.
“They were so grotesque and ugly in terms of make that they looked like armor, nearly. And I was like, ‘Well, what happens if you reduce it down to a thread line?’”
Pure fashion magic is what happens. Mirrored aviator frames and padded, high-top sneakers took these romantic and pretty silhouettes somewhere new, and that’s something Anderson is extremely skilled at, with only a few styling gestures.
Guests received a brass ring along with the show invitation, and entered a white cube printed with Beethoven sheet music. Inside was a stark room of pale floorboards punctuated by a small ceramic bird perched on a pole in the center. (It was a sculpture by Tracey Emin titled, “The only place you came to me was in my sleep.”)
This show will be remembered for its many novelties, including pleated khakis transformed with brass wire into a teacup skirt, feathery T-shirts printed with famous artworks or the busts of composers, biker jackets streamlined into little swingy tops, and tiny trapeze dresses stiffened by dense sequins or iridescent shells.
Interspersed were moments of intense chic: sumptuous leather shirts and coats with hems splayed thanks to built-in wires; cropped black tank tops tethered to handsome olive trousers, and slouchy suits, the sleeves cut extra loose and on the curve so it sags out when hands are stuffed in the pocket.
Anderson pays attention to such gestures, considering things like the positions on tailoring part of the “psychology of branding. It’s about tweaking the attitude.”
Even the extra-long men’s dress shoes — clownish in most other contexts — seemed as normal here as a bird on a pole.
