Few designers working today craft clothing with as intricate a narrative as Jonathan Anderson. For his latest JW Anderson menswear and womenswear offering—Resort 2022 for women’s, Spring Summer 2022 for men’s—the story of each collection leaps out of every Juergen Teller-lensed image.
For men, we meet housebound boys on the cusp of manhood, taking their long hibernation inside as an opportunity to experiment with the rigid and restrictive codes of gender. Baggy sweatpants worn with intricately woven knits emblazoned with oversized strawberry motifs, navy polos worn under hand-beaded dresses, lavender long johns.
For the womenswear—as always with Anderson’s work, the delineations between genders feel arbitrary—it’s the story of sartorial boldness in the face of a drab year spent indoors. “A party girl who dresses bluntly, mastering the art of nothingness through intense chromatic choices,” reads the accompanying press release.
She wears statement one-shouldered dresses in a bold palette of electric blue, poppy red, and yellow (with an orange cross-body bag slung over for good measure), then switches back to sharp cropped tailoring in muted tones, and back to color and volume again. The shoes are day-glo pool slides, the JW Anderson logos are haphazardly sprayed, graffiti-style, onto basketball-style jerseys, and loose-fitting knits.
The looks—which often encapsulate the kind of ‘so bad it’s good’ mismatch that has defined so many of our lockdown wardrobes—are given added depth thanks to the uncanny eye of Juergen Teller. The famed German photographer shot the collection in a nondescript suburban some in southeast London. “This is our third season working with Juergen,” says Anderson. “It has been such an amazing journey working with him and finding new ways to show a different character each season.”
Among the many visual delights of the collection was an easter egg from Anderson, teasing a new collaboration with the cult eyewear brand Persol. The oversized tortoiseshell shades will be part of an upcoming JW Anderson x Persol line, which is due to launch globally next month.
