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Loewe Lands in Los Angeles

Jonathan Anderson’s art-inflected designs and sculptural bags hit the sidewalks as the Spanish house’s new Rodeo Drive boutique opens

In partnership with LOEWE
Photography by
MARK GRIFFIN CHAMPION
Fashion Direction by CHRISTOPHER CAMPBELL
Words by ELIZABETH VARNELL

 

If ever there was a ground zero for the inflated sunglasses Jonathan Anderson designed for Loewe, it would be at the bottom of an empty swimming pool in Los Angeles. The oversized, madcap shades are the sort donned by lounging creatives, girls and guys in on-the-verge bands en route to rehearse, and urban poets leaning against abandoned stepladders dreaming up new verses. As the Loewe creative director opens the Spanish house’s West Coast flagship on Rodeo Drive, his artful aesthetic and penchant for whimsey evokes the avant-garde just as a concrete bowl, drained of water, at once conjures David Hockney’s underwater mural at the Roosevelt Hotel or any number of the painter’s depictions of plunge pools, each with its own certain degree of defiant freedom.

 

LOEWE jacket, $6,450, shorts, $4,600, Puzzle Monochrome bag, $3,500, and boots, $1,200.

 

LOEWE jacket, $2,100, Puzzle Monochrome bag, $3,500, and sunglasses, $310.

 

Central to the boutique’s offering are new leather Chinese Puzzle Monochrome bag iterations which nod to Loewe’s launch in 1846 as a collective workshop in Madrid, and the convertible handbag’s modernist geometric lines also bring to mind the tilted glass cubes of L.A.’s greatest living architect Frank Gehry’s first Westside residence. The new Monochromes launch in 10 glaze-inspired colors, including tea dust glaze, rouge blossoms glaze and tranquil mountain blue glaze, in tribute to the uniform color that emerges after firing porcelain.

 

LOEWE sunglasses, $310.

 

The Spanish house’s artful aesthetic and penchant for whimsy evokes the avant-garde

 

LOEWE tank top, $890, shorts, $850, and lace-up shoes, $990.

 

The ceramics obsession doesn’t end there. Anderson collects pottery personally and it’s a mainstay in Loewe boutiques from Paris to Tokyo. T-shirts from his pre-spring collection, printed with images of monochrome-glazed Chinese ceramics, are almost made for the region’s enduring streetwear obsession, and the brand’s Derby slip-ons seem tailored for Golden State microclimates. Inspired by Ming and Qing dynasty porcelain, the shirts (in yellow or mint green shades emulating ancient coloring techniques honed in China through the centuries) pair with similarly colored trousers for a single-hued look.

 

LOEWE T-shirt, $390, pants, $3,800, and mules, $990.

 

LOEWE T-shirt, $390, and sunglasses, $310.

 

The Puzzle handbag’s modernist geometric lines also bring to mind the architecture of Frank Gehry

 

 

 

LOEWE Puzzle Monochrome bags, $3,500 each.

 

As Loewe’s provocative Fall/Winter collection—with its Surrealist influences which include madcap Balloon dresses and pumps and asymmetric Bustier lip dresses—join other men’s and women’s ready-to-wear and Pre-Spring designs at the house’s new 3,067-square-foot Beverly Hills store, the streets—and pools—of Los Angeles are set to become even more vibrant than a Santa Monica sunset. 327 N. Rodeo Dr., Beverly Hills, 310-388-6771.

 

Model LEILA GOLDKUHL at Next Management.
Makeup by PIRCILLA PAE at A-Frame Agency.
Hair by ANDRE GUNN at Art-Dept.

 

Feature image: LOEWE jacket, $6,450, shorts, $4,600, Puzzle Monochrome bag, $3,500, and boots, $1,200.

 

November 17, 2022

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