Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez both speak fluent Spanish – a fact I only found out early last month, when I met them ensconced in their new Paris creative offices at Loewe. That may seem like the kind of fact restricted to a Tinder profile, but it means a lot at Loewe, where they were appointed creative directors in March, and where they have just shown their debut, like so many others. Loewe is a Spanish company – almost everyone bar the press team and the creative studio are based in Madrid, they said. So speaking the language is a major head-start in their new roles.
It also contextualises Loewe, which, under previous creative director Jonathan Anderson was an often freewheeling and fantastical exploration of craft, albeit one without a mooring in a specific culture. For McCollough and Hernandez, Spain proved to be a frame, a lexicon even, through which to consider the meaning of the brand, and what new interpretations they could bring – even as New Yorkers. Then again, there’s a heritage of that at Loewe – its first design director was Narciso Rodriguez, New Jersey-born, appointed in 1997. So, of a fashion, the cleanliness of American design had shaped its contemporary identity.
The artists formerly known as Proenza Schouler are shining examples of that in the 21st century. They also built that New York label on a notion of craft, inherent to their designs, and on leather, which they were always excellent at handling. I remember a show of theirs a few years ago opened by Chloë Sevigny in a crisp white shirt, a black wool jacket and a mid-calf supple black leather skirt that seemed to morph into matching boots. There was a braided belt around the middle like a whip. She looked utterly fantastic – a bit Robert Mapplethorpe, a bit Robert Longo ‘Men in the Cities’, although plural was wrong as it could only be New York. It’s probably the best outfit they've ever designed – although, actually, it could’ve easily been labelled Loewe.
That New World identity is still there, of course – you can take the boys out of New York, but their sense of pragmatism, practicality and stripped-back ease prevails. But for their Loewe debut McCollough and Hernandez perhaps inevitably asked themselves: “What constitutes Spanishness in 2025?” The boldest shout was the colour, Balearic jolts of brilliant apple green, tomato, yellow, and Iberian blue. Those shaped leather garments, mostly, an area of brand expertise that here shaped apparently seamless moulded jackets and dresses that stood like carapaces away from the body. Leather at Loewe is mostly applied to accessories – the drawstring closure and fat, satisfyingly wrinkled flesh of its best-selling Flamenco bag hung between the shoulder blades of a few leather anoraks, like a witty nod to what everyone knows actually makes the money. McCollough and Hernandez are canny – they proposed new styles, but also the existing, including that Flamenco, embraced by the models too as an emblem of building on the identity of Loewe rather than wiping it out.
That’s a modern way to approach a succession plan within a brand: carry the successes with you. What McCollough and Hernandez did, adroitly, was to streamline Loewe signatures with an American sportswear mentality, meaning outfits were clean-cut and straightforward – parkas, polos, bomber jackets, straight-leg jeans. Many, however, weren’t understandable – you couldn’t quite comprehend what they were made from, mostly leathers with laser perforated or fretted surfaces, as if they’d been lightly grated, or stiffened fabrics apparently fighting against gravity. Some stuff looked like denim, but wasn’t – in fact, most anything wasn’t what it initially seemed. But there was an odd, abstract sense of Spanishness running through, like the ruffles of the traje de flamenca abstracted to multiple panes of fabric, dresses like wrapped towels, or curling materials as if dampened and dried out on the beach. Each held a degree of familiarity in its form – a lingering identity, reconsidered. In short, it was an arresting, invigorating yet gentle shift to the house’s new chapter. And for two much-beloved figures, the crowd roared.
