Everything
The sight of Irish actor Jamie Dornan sitting beneath digital renditions of himself fronting the Loewe campaign was almost enough to take away from what Loewe was delivering for their Fall Winter 2024 runway. Almost enough.
But not quite. Not even Dornan could outshine the looks that were a deep dive into, as creative director Jonathan Anderson puts it, the algorithm of masculinity. In other words, the way masculinity is presented, represented, retweeted, shared and disseminated online.
This also happens to be the same mediated experience that American artist Richard Hawkins, who Anderson collaborated with for this collection, delves into in his work with his collages of celebrity culture overlapping with homoerotica and digital trends which found their way into the collection via the surfaces of trousers and accessories.
The interactions between digital and physical worlds have been a regular arena where Anderson’s ideas find shape. Last season, it was garments embossed with crystals that Anderson said reminded him of filters. This season, the interrogation was a little more direct. Core masculine basics of jeans, shirts and sweatpants were ideas to be toyed with, given treatments that challenged the tropes that find their way into the male wardrobe.
This includes the method of dressing, or the act of it. Garments were fused together – a jacket to a pair of trousers for example – while others were emphasised through the absence of their counterparts as was the case of the pants free model in the opening look. But it was also a hyper-realistic appropriation of the way young men dressing.
Carefree with layers and volume competing to create a careless comfort. Leather trousers paired with minimalist skate shoes, coats stuffed with T-shirts or belts left hanging and undone, reminded me of being 18, studying, and living on what I described as my “floordrobe” – basically, wearing whatever was on the floor at the time. Although only in my dreams was I ever this chic.
