Loewe Fall 2023 Ad Campaign Review

Review of Loewe Fall 2023 Men’s Ad Campaign by Creative Director Jonathan Anderson and Photographer David Sims with models Omar Apollo and Jamie Dornan

Loewe continues to investigate the boundaries between art and life with its new Fall 2023 men’s campaign. The imagery was captured by photographer David Sims, who turns his lens on two fellow artists: singer-songwriter Omar Apollo and actor Jamie Dornan.

Loewe Fall 2023 ad campaign photo by David Sims

Sims draws further inspiration from the work of contemporary artist Julien Nguyen, whose work informed Jonathan Anderson’s designs for the collection, as well as featuring heavily in the production and set design of the collection’s runway show. Nguyen’s paintings draw on the composition of Italian Renaissance portraiture, but apply it to subject matter that feels distinctly contemporary, creating intimate investigations of technological anxiety and queer identity.

Drawing on this practice, Sims’ photographic portraits find his protagonists in moments of solitary contemplation in a liminal space that both echoes the real world and artistically defies it. A simple interior with familiar objects like lamps and houseplants is blurred and subverted by the set design’s use of translucent plastic sheeting, which recalls canvases, drop cloths, theater scrims, or gallery glass – an evocative yet humble meeting of the worlds of art and everyday life.

The accompanying still-life images of star bags and shoes at once provide a blunt counterpoint to the seemingly opposite artistic practice of portraiture while partaking in and deepening the same aesthetic, rounding out the campaign’s distinct visual world.

The campaign fits perfectly within Loewe’s signature spirit of reduction and surrealism, while expanding this practice into new collaborative territory. Under the creative leadership of Jonathan Anderson, the brand has developed an uncanny ability to be at once grounded, straightforward, and present on the one hand, and elusive and dreamlike on the other. Bringing exciting new collaborators into its world of strange beauty, Loewe continues to enchant us with its idiosyncratic vision.