Loewe's celebrity cathedral

Loewe's latest menswear show was a meditation on the cult of celebrity, the leveling effect of the global web, and a brilliant collaboration with Los Angeles-based artist Richard Hawkins.

The complex looked like a celebrity cathedral, built inside the Garde Républicaine barracks near the Seine. A large white space with a series of huge Gothic windows, within which were multimedia art installations, mixing Renaissance religious painting, holy icons, gay porn and appearances by Loewe ambassadors.

Often, fans of the brand, from Jamie Dornan to Josh O'Connor, shoot themselves, as if they've woken up.

“Now that media has become 360, what does that mean for the future of fashion? “I like the idea of ​​iconography: using phones to take pictures and validate yourself,” said Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson, amid an attack by fashion critics with iPhones.

“I think the Internet has blurred boundaries… So I don't think there are fashion movements anymore, more subcultures online,” Anderson explained.

Anderson had telegraphed his intentions with the invitation: a tablecloth-sized canvas collage painted by Hawkins with the same characters and hues seen in the show's grand altarpiece and mock stained glass windows.

Anderson sending the collages in sweatpants; cassocks that sweep the floor; chenille robes and sweatshirts; and tote or weekend bags sprouting orange and blue manes.

Like the initial cabins finished with an artist's scarf and shown with only slippers and bare legs; and made in lime green or bright orange.

He mixed bright plaid shirts with giant cargo pants. Loewe's signature raw suede was also used to great effect in beige and tobacco dyed coats, like the one worn by Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino at the show. Before finishing with hyper-deconstructed coats, mixing elements of trench, spy and cabans.

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In a very cool front row, Nicholas Hoult joined Zayn Malik, under the simulated windows: mixes of the sacred and the profane, kitsch with perversion.

A soundtrack, that decidedly American classic Guns N' Roses anthem 'Wanted Dead or Alive' blasting out of the speakers, following the theme song of 'The Magnificent Seven'. Although it's also a show that began with a television recording of a celebrity talking about Sean Penn.

“Richard Hawkins is a painter that I love and we started talking about the videos he posted on Instagram,” Anderson said. An idea that ended when Hawkins incorporated Loewe windows from the 1920s in the cathedral that celebrated the celebration. In which a group of young celebrities occupied his benches.

“I love Richard's sense of humor in his work, like putting Justin Bieber and then Van Dyck in the top corner of these paintings. Everything is a collage of media, and the objective of fashion is to predict the future, but also to reinterpret the norms through deception,” concluded Anderson, after the most suggestive show of the 13 days of the international men's season, held on its penultimate morning. . .