Spanish luxury fashion house LOEWE has touched down in China, with a playful retrospective inside the Shanghai Exhibition Centre, titled Crafted World. Open from March 22 through May 5, the brand's first major showcase chronicles the House's 178 years in business through six chapters, curated by creative director Jonathan Anderson.
"It’s very difficult to look back at everything,” Anderson, who signed onto the label in 2013, told Vogue of his experience curating the exhibition. “The clothing is the biggest surprise to me. I think I’ve sold this to the press so many times that every collection was different, and every collection was something brand new. Now when I see everything over the last 10 years ... the car dress doesn't feel very out of place with the very first collection, which is shredded bits of fabric.”
With set design from OMA, the exhibition's first room offers a centuries-spanning look at LOEWE's best work. The brand's artifacts, like its 20th-century iron tools and a visitor book featuring Ernest Hemingway's signature, are shown next to more contemporary feats, like Rihanna's custom red suit for the Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show and the trompe-l'oeil bodysuit Beyoncé wore during her Renaissance tour.
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69 notable looks from Anderson's LOEWE lines — Spring 2015's fishermen's pants, Fall 2019's pearl-embroidered sweater and Spring 2023's petal dress among them — stand tall in an upstairs gallery, under a selection of artworks from the brand's storied collection, which includes Anthea Hamilton's Giant Pumpkin No. 6. Later, actresses Yang Mi and Jodie Comer teach visitors how to say the brand's name in a "Pronunciation Tunnel," where their voices echo the phonetic composition of LOEWE. (It's "LO-WEH-VAY," by the way.)
The tunnel ends in a gallery dedicated to the imprint's founding country of Spain, which houses vintage Spanish advertisements, fringe bucket bags and Pablo Picasso artworks alongisde an expansive visual of the Mediterranean Sea. In the following room, "The Atelier," the brand breaks down the making of its coveted accessories, like the Puzzle Bag and a massive iteration of the Studio Ghibli Giant Moving Castle Bag. Notably, the brand's highly sought-after collaboration with the Japanese animation studio receive its own gallery space, where visitors can revel in the duo's imaginative fashionscape IRL.
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LOEWE's Crafted World retrospective opens to the public on March 22 at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre. Take a look inside the showcase in the gallery above.
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