With all the musical chairs at fashion houses going on this last year, it was easy to miss how Jonathan Anderson used his final collection at Loewe to cement his reputation as a champion of craft. Presented quietly in Paris in March, overshadowed by the designer’s big move to Dior, the fall/winter ready-to-wear line spotlights a collaboration with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, a perfect bookend to Anderson’s 11-year tenure at the Spanish maison marked not only by the introduction of the Loewe Craft Prize, but an overarching innovative vision for integrating artisanal tradition into bold, concept-driven luxury fashion.
True to the spirit of Anderson’s Loewe, there’s an underlying wit to the collection. The jackets are like if you threw on a blanket. The handbags are similarly, deliciously louche. This simplicity feels deeply considered and aligned with the form-follows-function ethos of the Bauhaus, where Josef and Anni met in the 1920s, a philosophy they carried with them to Black Mountain College, where they landed after the Bauhaus closed under mounting Nazi repression. The same reason you could call this collaboration obvious is what makes it a concise thesis on the potency of Anderson’s work over the last 11 years. Craft’s 20th century Modernist revival offers a road map for understanding why his signature wabi-sabi surrealism at Loewe resonated so intensely, and no one channels this history quite like Josef and Anni.
“In our current era of extreme violence and unease, it feels so logical to return to the Albers’ work, which was in itself a reaction to war,” says author and artist Calla Henkel, whose latest novel, “Scrap,” was set in and around the North Carolina craft community where the Black Mountain experiment spawned. “The Albers’ creative output evokes some mystical idea of live-work balance; it’s easy to imagine them at home, wrapped in the contemplative heat of making things side-by-side. I yearn for that time, also maybe because it was a version of America that was anti-Nazi.”
Loewe Medium Flamenco Purse Dotted
For Albers acolytes, there are some incredible details in the new Loewe collection. For example, many of the handbag straps feature washers strung on ribbons, referencing a series of jewelry designs Anni Albers made with Alexander Reed in 1940. “In [her book] ‘On Weaving’ she underscores how the very particular qualities of really elemental things, like a thread, combine into something complex and fascinating,” explains Sophy Naess, artist and senior critic at Yale School of Art. “There’s something very fundamental in textile work with stringing things together. Using a ribbon to interweave a bunch of washers is such a nice example.”
When Anni Albers published her theoretical magnum opus “On Weaving” in 1965, she was already lamenting the loss of our tactile sensibilities, which have undeniably worsened in the digital era. “So often my students say they just want to work with their hands more. They don’t necessarily have any specific motives, but they want to be more involved with craft in some way because they feel deprived of this material sensibility,” Naess observes.
Anni Albers especially feels in the air right now. Italian interiors fabrics manufacturer Dedar debuted their own collaboration reinterpreting her weavings at Milan Design Week in April while Mexican architect Frida Escobedo has cited Anni Albers’ signature rhythmic grids as a key inspiration for the latticed limestone façade she’s designing for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new wing dedicated to modern and contemporary art, slated to open in 2030.
Reimagining Anni Albers’ 1950s tapestries as Loewe has — the jacquard of their jackets and bags woven on mechanical looms and finished with hand-twist techniques — is also a bizarrely elegant way to engage the stranglehold “trad” has over the cultural imagination, from Mormon wives to floral dress Republicans. Tapping into the craft revival of yesteryear speaks to a cyclical impulse for structure amid the chaos of now.
While Loewe’s collaboration draws from both Josef and Anni Albers — folding their creative partnership and love story into its narrative — the translation of Josef’s “Homage to the Square” color-theory paintings into shoes, shirts, skirts, handbags and wallets feels more like merchandising (that’s not necessarily a dirty word; it’s long been one of Anderson’s strengths). But ultimately, the “Homage” homages land with less impact because they don’t have the same tactile richness as those channeling Anni’s weavings. An exception is a small Loewe bucket bag inspired by Josef’s early glass assemblage experiments when he was a Bauhaus student, which abounds with glass bobbles and haptic surprise.
Loewe Medium Flamenco Purse Pasture
Anni Albers didn’t exactly choose craft. Like her mentor Gunta Stölzl, she was steered toward the Bauhaus weaving workshop because textiles were considered women’s work. She spent her career advocating that craft should be taken as seriously as fine art. Only in the last decade or so has the art and design world really gotten the memo — an enthusiastic course correction that’s made the recovery of Anni Albers’ legacy possible. Like many such reversals, it’s been a bit clumsy at times, complicated by the fact that Albers’ practice borrowed — quite openly — from Indigenous craft, specifically ancient Peruvian weaving traditions.
The Loewe Craft Prize, instituted under Anderson’s creative direction in 2016, both contributed to and capitalized on this growing momentum around craft. “The obvious thing the craft prize does is honor craft, which is part of Loewe’s heritage, but it also signals very cleverly to people who are maybe not so interested in fashion that Loewe appreciates other beautiful things of value,” explains Felix Burrichter, creative director of design magazine Pin-Up. “They’re saying that if you’re interested in these other beautiful things, then Loewe might be a brand that understands you.” It’s no coincidence iconoclastic artists like Precious Okoyomon and Sylvie Fleury have been known to wear Loewe.
As Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, formerly of Proenza Schouler, take up the mantle of Loewe, there’s every indication that they will continue reaffirming craft as integral to the brand’s DNA. “[McCollough and Hernandez] have always shown interest in that side of design but never had the resources and access to work with ateliers at the level of what they’ll have through Loewe. My guess is they’ll really push material exploration now,” Burrichter says.
Like it or not, fashion has become a key vehicle for popularizing art and design history. How McCollough and Hernandez will play with this at Loewe will be interesting to see. “Looking at the trajectory of Anderson’s robust engagement with artists’ estates, his choices became increasingly mainstream during his tenure,” notes Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, curator of contemporary design at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. “I myself favor the exchanges with living artists such as the ‘show on a wall’ kit with Anthea Hamilton.”
As basic girl (at least craft-wise) as this Loewe x Albers collab might be, it’s art historically savvy. In the words of Naess, “There are gonna be all these wealthy textile freak ladies that will need to have these pieces.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
