STEAL, ADAPT, BORROW

Jonathan Anderson transformed Loewe by radically reinterpreting classic garments. Is Dior next?

- REBECCA MEAD

At Loewe, Anderson has made garments of surreal potency, contrived to go viral. This dress features 3-D-printed "balloons."

In one of the grandest galleries of the Museo del Prado, in Madrid, two large canvases are displayed alongside each other an "Adam and Eve" painted by Titian, around 1550, and another rendering of the subject by Peter Paul Rubens, made eight decades later. In both, a shaggy-haired Adam, seated on the left, extends an arm in a futile attempt to prevent an intoxicated-looking Eve from plucking a shiny apple from the Tree of Knowledge, in which a serpentlike creature lurks. The sizes of the images, the placement of the figures, and even the color palettes are close enough to make the works initially indistinguishable. But more careful scrutiny reveals that Rubens made deft alterations to Titian's composition. Titian's Adam leans backward on his right arm; his left hand, which rests limply on Eve's upper breast, appears hardly capable of stopping her. In Rubens's version, Adam leans strenuously forward, his midsection torqued in a desperate effort to divert Eve's glazed eyes from temptation. Rubens reproduced many of Titian's paintings, but Miguel Falomir Faus, the director of the Prado, has written that "Adam and Eve" is the only one that improves on the original.