Loewe Confirms Jonathan Anderson is Stepping Down as Artistic Director

Jonathan Anderson is departing after 11 years as inventive director of Loewe, which he reworked from a small, respected Spanish leather-based home right into a vibrant world luxurious model steeped in modern tradition.

Loewe introduced his exit in a brief assertion shared completely with WWD. It didn’t say what Anderson’s subsequent transfer is perhaps — or point out any successor.

Nonetheless, it’s virtually an open secret in Paris that Anderson is heading to Dior — and should have already began engaged on the spring 2026 menswear assortment there.

Proenza Schouler designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who in January stepped down from their New York-based label, are broadly anticipated to succeed Anderson at Loewe.

“Whereas reflecting on the final 11 years, I’ve been fortunate sufficient to be surrounded by folks with the creativeness, the abilities, the tenacity and the resourcefulness to discover a solution to say ‘Sure’ to all my wildly formidable concepts,” Anderson mentioned within the assertion. “Whereas my chapter attracts to a detailed, Loewe’s story will proceed for a few years to come back, and I’ll look on with pleasure, watching it proceed to develop, the superb Spanish model I as soon as referred to as house.”

Pascale Lepoivre, chief govt officer of Loewe, expressed her gratitude to Anderson for the “unmatched creativity, ardour and dedication that he has given to Loewe. With him as its inventive director, the home has risen to new heights with worldwide recognition. The Puzzle bag, celebrating its tenth anniversary, has turn into a real icon, and the model codes that he has created, rooted in craft, will dwell on as his legacy.”

Sidney Toledano, a veteran of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton who has been CEO of Christian Dior Couture, head of LVMH Vogue Group, and an adviser to LVMH chief Bernard Arnault, mentioned he has “had the pleasure of working with a number of the nice creative administrators of current occasions, and I contemplate Jonathan Anderson to be amongst the perfect.”

“What he has contributed to Loewe goes past creativity. He has constructed a wealthy and eclectic world with sturdy foundations in craft which is able to allow the home to thrive lengthy after his departure,” Toledano added.

The event appears to set the stage for a blockbuster European runway season this fall, which may even see the debut of designer Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, of his successor Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta — and fairly presumably the brand new inventive administrators at Gucci, Dior and Loewe.

To make sure, Anderson set a excessive bar at Loewe, reworking a Madrid-based home identified largely for leather-based items, items and perfumes into a worldwide participant synonymous with daring fashions, quirky collaborations with the likes of Studio Ghibli, and kooky campaigns, the most recent that includes bodybuilders and knights in full armor posing subsequent to fashions.

His designs for Loewe and his signature model JW Anderson earned a heap of awards, together with the 2022 WWD Honor for Womenswear Designer of the 12 months, Worldwide Designer of the 12 months Award on the 2023 CFDA Vogue Awards, the Neiman Marcus Award for Artistic Affect within the Area of Vogue in 2023 and Designer of the 12 months on the British Vogue Awards in 2024 and 2023.

Revenues Rose Sevenfold

The designs additionally helped catapult the size of the Loewe enterprise, with revenues multiplying by greater than seven occasions over his tenure to strategy 2 billion euros, market sources estimate.

A continuing all through Anderson’s Loewe tenure has been a give attention to craft, which stems from his private affection for arts and crafts antiques, and his appreciation for weavers and potters.

A longtime collector of ceramics and wood-turning items, the designer established the Loewe Basis Craft Prize in 2016. Its 2025 version attracted greater than 4,500 functions from around the globe, with a winner to be revealed in Madrid on June 29.

The annual competitors pays tribute to Loewe’s roots as a leather-making collective and provider to the Spanish royal crown.

The corporate was based in 1846 and bought in 1996 by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, which first put in designer Narciso Rodriguez, then José Enrique Oña Selfa, after which Stuart Vevers, who exited in 2013 when he moved to Coach.

The identical yr, LVMH acquired a 46 p.c stake within the JW Anderson label and handed Anderson the inventive management at Loewe.

On the time, LVMH mentioned the designer, then solely 29, submitted an excellent proposal providing a recent, trendy and a brand new manner of Loewe, whereas respecting its historical past.

“Luxurious finally needed to fall into the cultural panorama for it to have the ability to turn into related,” Anderson informed WWD in a 2023 interview. “The model is about storytelling. There’s a complicated language that’s being constructed, however finally it’s about bringing folks on the journey with both one thing they anticipate or one thing they don’t anticipate. I feel that’s what’s good about Loewe — you can’t pigeonhole it.

“The job of a inventive director immediately is to carry the DNA of the model to the forefront and make it related for the interval — to not alter the precise the DNA of the model itself.”

Certainly, his makeover of Loewe has been sure-handed and revolutionary.

He initially appropriated ’90s-era vogue imagery as present-day advert campaigns; introduced an unvarnished, spontaneous spirit to the usually shiny luxurious world, and launched some dramatic retailer ideas with creative components, together with Picasso ceramics and Rennie Waterproof coat chairs, positing the model in a broader cultural context.

Together with his tousled hair, unfastened crewneck sweaters, denims — and a cup of espresso seemingly glued to his proper hand — the effusive, stern-faced designer resembles a college pupil ceaselessly cramming for exams.

Journalists relish his post-show, stream-of-consciousness musings, throughout which he shares a tumble of historic and creative references that one way or the other add as much as very authentic, compelling fashions.

Whereas some designers chase viral moments through stunts or the fitting movie star affiliations, Anderson creates fireworks through emphatic, sharply executed design concepts, each for Loewe and his JW Anderson model, which has a barely youthful, extra irreverent spirit.

Simmering underneath the floor of each manufacturers are references to artwork and surrealism, plus sly commentary in regards to the perils of know-how, social media and our estrangement from nature.

In recent times, Anderson has described his Loewe as “stripped again,” “primal,” “decreased” and “blunt.”

In the meantime, he has earned a popularity for purses — headlined by the perennially standard Puzzle bag, and extra just lately the Flamenco and Squeeze fashions — and crowd pleasing footwear with birthday candles, bars of cleaning soap, nail polish bottles, short-stemmed roses, damaged eggs or squashed balloons serving as heels.

Born in Northern Eire in 1984, Anderson studied menswear on the London School of Vogue, graduating in 2005 and happening to work in visible merchandising at Prada underneath Manuela Pavesi. He consulted for a number of manufacturers earlier than launching JW Anderson in 2008.

He rapidly attracted consideration for provocative and androgynous designs equivalent to frilly Bermuda shorts and bandeau tops for males. And his womenswear exhibits rapidly turned probably the most sought-after ticket of London Vogue Week.

On the root of the whole lot he does is daring.

“For me, vogue is thrilling, and it must be thrilling whether or not you get it fallacious or proper,” he informed WWD in a 2015 interview. “If you happen to do generic issues, you realize, after some time, manufacturers or designers turn into stagnated. You need to be barely uncomfortable with what you’re doing, and you’ve got to have the ability to attempt to discover moments of newness.”