Life finds a way: Organic fashion in an inorganic world
By Jules Vivas
Loewe spring/summer 2023 men’s runway collection is an exploration of perception, progress, and nature
Creative director Jonathan Anderson manipulates technology and nature for the spring/summer 2023 men’s collection of Spanish fashion house Loewe. Plants sprouting from apparel incorporated with screens decorate the bodies of models for the menswear show that entices new perspectives. “A fusion of the organic and the fabricated,” says the designer of the assemblage, which is aimed at inspiring discussions on the present condition and future of fashion.
‘ is not a viewpoint of what is happening in the world, but it’s more about if we experiment then we might be able to find different methods within fashion to be able to progress.’
Pieces in neutral solid colors with bright accents whisper and shout in renewed and standardized silhouettes that reproduce the digital and the genuine. The garments sown, seeded, watered, and grown for over 20 days in a polytunnel outside of Paris were made in collaboration with Spanish bio-designer Paula Ulargui Escalona.
Staples are the bomber, a hoodie, sweatshirt, polo, shirt, track pants, shorts, waxed jacket, and a parka in padded Nappa, or ozone-treated cotton that makes these garments seem as though they were buried underground. In this collection, tech relics from earphones to a pen drive and phone case cluster on a leather coat, chia plants and cats wort grow on clothes and shoes, and turncoats and tops are screened into projection devices.
Footage of nature, of tropical fish, bees, and daffodils are flashed on screens strapped across the models’ chests as a symbol of how people are consumed by screens today. “I think in a weird way we are getting trapped in a kind of dogma,” explains Anderson. “ is not a viewpoint of what is happening in the world, but it’s more about if we experiment then we might be able to find different methods within fashion to be able to progress.”
The show is a poetic vision seen through technology, expanding perceptions and boundaries on the materiality of clothesmaking.
The showpieces become one with nature over time and it’s up to us to interpret it as an inspiring story or a cautionary tale of the future ahead of us. As the late fashion editrix Diana Vreeland, the legendary Vogue editor who had a sense of what was to come, “You can even see the approaching of a revolution in clothes.”