There’s been a big focus on wearability at fashion month this season. At Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri presented outerwear made to battle the elements, complete with cutting-edge heat-trapping technology by the sportswear company D-Air Labs. Anthony Vaccarello offered a sophisticated twist on his traditional hyper-sexy vision for Saint Laurent with floor-skimming satin dresses, styled with oversized woollen pea coats. Jonathan Anderson—a fashion maverick with a quintessentially British sense of humour—decided to take things in another direction for his fall winter 2022 Loewe collection. Surrealism was front and centre: a fact immediately evident by the myriad giant acrylic pumpkins that lined the runway.
Among the list of visual delights? Cherry red stilettos trapped in sheer draped dresses. Mini dresses with hems that resembled a four-seater car. Jersey column dresses embellished with little shrunken balloons (the balloons also made an appearance as ‘bralettes’, affixed to cascading trompe l’oeil gowns). And a gown with a bustier made to resemble polished, puckered lips. Anderson told WWD that he wanted to “push a silhouette toward something that can be nonsensical, things that can be irrational.”
This echoed some of the sentiments Loewe shared about their much-loved spring summer 2022 collection, which showed in Paris last October. “So much of fashion is quite impractical because of body shape and all of that anyway,” the artist Anthea Hamilton—who often collaborates with Anderson, and created the pumpkins for today’s sets— told i-D of SS’22, which featured large sheer cut-outs, dramatic boxy hemlines, and hard metallic breast plates. “This was very explicit about that—that this is what fabric can do or what shapes can do or what movement can do.”
Granted, we’re unlikely to see women lining up in droves for a car dress come September (never say never—I’ve been wrong in the past). But for every fabulous moment of experimentation there was a look grounded in everyday life—statement padded bomber jackets, deliciously-cut long-line blazers (paired with jodhpurs with cone-like embellishments on the knee, obviously), and wonderful oversized coats. But after two years where we’ve done nothing but be weighed down by reality, who doesn’t want a little escapism from fashion? Anderson showcased fashion in its most esoteric form: a place for artistic freedom, creative collaboration, and escapism. Bravo.
