In 1846, Neptune was discovered. The Liberty Bell cracked as it rang out in celebration of George Washington’s birthday. The saxophone was patented. And a small group of leather craftsmen in Madrid opened the workshop that would ultimately become Loewe.
One hundred and eighty years later, the brand is the grande dame of LVMH’s global portfolio (not to mention the second-oldest operating luxury house in the world) and is celebrating its anniversary with proportionate vigor. Loewe’s history, after all, encompasses empires and international commerce. This is the house that brought the best of Spain’s artisans together, unifying in 1872 under the name of German leather craftsman Enrique Loewe Roessberg, who joined that year after finding himself awestruck at the quality of the operation.
It’s the same house that became an official purveyor to the Royal Household of Spain at the turn of the century, and, in 2016, established the celebrated Loewe Foundation Craft Prize to set the international standard for excellence in contemporary artisanship.
For its anniversary, a new campaign tracks this lineage through the house’s best-known output: expertly engineered leather accessories. A series of images shot by Talia Chetrit sees Loewe ambassadors, including Julia Garner and Giselle, reclining with the Flamenco Clutch, a drawstring carryall from the 1980s, as well as the 2015 Puzzle bag, which came to epitomize the house’s 21st-century rejuvenation. The origami-like accessory was designed by then-Creative Director Jonathan Anderson (whose tenure saw Loewe blossom from cult leathersmith to multibillion-dollar revenue generator) in a feat of pattern-making and architectural vision.
Its current chapter is represented by the Amazona 180, a 1975 creation reimagined in Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s debut collection last fall. The pair arrived from Proenza Schouler with the aim of refreshing Loewe for its anniversary. But their archival excavations signal that legacy will never be abandoned at the house. With a trove of designs this storied, who would?
In its earliest iteration, the Amazona spoke to a changing Spain that saw women join the workforce in droves, becoming financially independent enough to invest in a staple that would grow with their ambitions, from home to boardroom to bar and back again. For Americans McCollough and Hernandez, the clientele they dress must seem much the same: driven, discerning, and in need of designers with the same attributes on side.
The duo’s Amazona, now rendered in supple calfskin, is at the center of the anniversary capsule collection, alongside a number of other archival pulls all inscribed with the visage of a lion (a nod to the German translation of Löwe). In an accompanying animated film, Antonio Banderas narrates the history of the house, emphasizing its predating inventions like the lightbulb. When it comes to craft, Loewe has certainly brought no less illumination.
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