Review of Loewe Fall 2022 Men’s Fashion Show
The Shape of Light
By Mark Wittmer
Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson bends light with another far-seeing collection presented at Paris Men’s Week Fall 2022.
A visionary technique incorporated into the first several looks clues us into a collection-wide exploration of the experience of seeing and recognition.
Strings of LED lights are woven into the fabric of the pieces themselves, a simple concept brilliantly executed that becomes a new sort of ornamentation, an aspect of pure light. “
This playful exploration of form and sight-lines is manifest across the collection’s silhouettes. Structural inserts at the hems of T-shirts and shorts make the body mind-bendingly move away from itself in two different directions. Asymmetrical sheer sweaters bounce and curve dreamily away from shoulders. Seemingly too-tight jackets are offset by oversized drawstring leather shoes – a piece that also evinces smart and playful thinking on how to freshly repurpose house codes.
More whimsical and smart riffs on construction appear in the form of knit balaclavas (a very trendy item right now) with heart-shaped face openings, sweaters featuring built-in gloves with mega-long fingers, curvy boatnecks, and a variety of pieces with large buttons sewn straight through the fabric in seemingly random configurations.
The trompe-l’oeil motif is picked up again in cheeky prints of nude torsos on tops, an aspect of revelation that also carries through the beautiful translucent trench coats. The lining of jackets extends beyond the interior and opens up to the viewer, inviting their gaze within the structure of the piece. On another coat, interior pockets go outside.
Jonathan Anderson has always been interested in transparency, but this collection saw the designer push himself to especially brilliant new territories. From the literal exploration of light to the material approaches that play with what is seen and unseen, he kept us guessing with technical mastery that was constantly revealing unexpected perceptions.
Not only is Anderson’s work here deconstructionist in the sense of clothing, but it deconstructs and rearranges the very way we see the body, whether it’s that of another, or our own. It’s another revelatory collection from a designer who, while still staying within Loewe’s atmosphere, masterfully moves at the speed of light.