The Loewe Way

It took a brash designer with an unconventional approach to jolt a sleepy Spanish luxury house back into the big leagues.

- Eric Wilson

In a bright alcove of his new Casa Loewe flagship in Madrid, Jonathan Anderson has finally realized one vision of his dream for the Spanish label: a store where art, ceramics, and even a flower shop fill out his idea of what fashion can be. Behind him, on a sunny afternoon just before the opening in November, is an early example of a Richard Smith “kite painting” that decorated a Mr Chow restaurant in London in the 1970s. Downstairs, facing the entrance, is a large-scale print of abstract spots by the British painter Howard Hodgkin, whom Anderson has admired for years. Korean moon jars from various decades are potted amidst a rainbow display of leather handbags that have names like the Puzzle, the Hammock, and—who could not love it?—the Elephant, a small coin pouch shaped like an origami animal.

“The art is from all different periods,” says Anderson, 32, who became the creative director of Loewe in 2013, just five years after starting his wildly popular J.W.Anderson collection in London. “It’s just, like, how do you do it in a way that is a bit wrong? And sometimes the taste is, well, maybe not everyone’s taste. But I suppose that’s the point.”