Loewe: metaphysical mode

Loewe presented its last show at the Chateau de Vincennes, in a metaphysical setting that suggested an outsider looking in, as in this brilliant collection.

In the center was a whole series of modern morning dresses; tailcoats, Eton public school coats or elongated trousers, although radically reinvented for 2025 and finished with unexpected rhinestones. He paired most of them with gigantic silk pants in bold floral prints.

“I discovered some morning coats from the 1920s and found them incredibly empowering because they make you behave in a certain way,” Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson explained after the show, after taking his bow with his hands in his pockets.

All crossed by Anderson with the works of Albert York, the American artist known for his naive oil paintings of farm animals, gardens and dogs. In fact, the farmhouse set was also an exhibition of York's works, 18 of which were hung on forest green walls. With multiple arches and a labyrinthine design, the complex was reminiscent of de Chirico's metaphysical designs. An image of York of a suspicious bulldog even emerging from the wall to appear in a densely woven checkerboard dress.

Although the star of the show was the exceptional silhouette, especially the enormous pants cut with a multitude of folds, Janissary style; and combined with an unlikely series of Anglo-Saxon floral prints.

“Like the York paintings, the popular frames, the windows to another world, I was thinking about why we collect things, the idea of ​​the commission or the Chippendale chair. An outsider looking at a world that we do not experience, that is strange in itself,” Anderson reflected.

An outsider very similar to York in a sense. Although relatively obscure, his paintings ended up being collected by wealthy patrons such as Paul Mellon, Edward Gorey, and Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy and, therefore, hanging in palatial Fifth Avenue apartments.

In fact, Anderson opened the show with evening looks, a trio of loose silk dresses with cut-out sides and open backs, cinched at the waist with buckled belts. They looked incredibly new.

His other great idea in tailoring was Crombies and redingotes topped with gilt silver lapels that turned out to be made of wood, Chippendale style.

Anderson headed home in search of her prints and found them at a brand called Chelsea.

“It was a little factory in Britain that lasted about two minutes, copying everything French, and that's where the idea of ​​a completely beaded bag of asparagus came from,” he laughed with obvious delight.

Like the clothes, the soundtrack was an assembly: from dark techno to dive 6 from William Basinki, to apocalyptic punk hell in Paradise by Yoko Ono.

The result was a very decorative collection, where everything seemed to be in exactly the right place, like in the mansion of a noble family.

“The idea of ​​the aristocrat is almost a caricature, it really doesn't exist anymore, it's almost like Mangas,” Anderson insisted, temporarily forgetting that Jaime de Marichalar, Duke of Lugo and member of Loewe's board of directors, was sitting in the front row.

To underline the feeling of a strange man looking in, a Loewe crew filmed people arriving in cars. A series of rare Jaguars, Mercedes and Rolls Royces from the 1970s parked in front of the Chateau de Vincennes.