LOEWE PRESENTS FW22 COLLECTION

Fashion that provokes a reaction, stripped down to a raw primitivism with the excitement of kink. Touch is stimulated: felt, latex, leather, tweed, knit, 3D printed fibre, silk, resin. Movement is captured, objects are trapped. Fur dresses and moulded felt bustiers, draped dresses with lip-bars or balloon bras. Jackets frayed at the neck or chest. A dress frozen in time. Blouses and puffed knitted dresses.

More draping, a trompe l’oeil embrace and more balloons, right down to the heels. Kinky cowboy boots. Sandals as seat belts. Flamenco and Goya swell, Puzzle becomes solid colours.

Guests enter the grounds of the Paris Tennis Club through a monumental reproduction of Anthea Hamilton’s Aquarius, 2010. Here, Hamilton plays with the politics of the icon and questions the desire it arouses. The image of a toned man wearing only shorts is the epitome of the idealised male body that evokes Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, a symbol of supposed male perfection.

The venue is a square pavilion covered entirely in brown carpeting, inspired by sake bags and reminiscent of the earth: a primitive scene. Inside the space are Anthea Hamilton’s giant pumpkins, 2022. The exact scale replicas of real giant pumpkins – usually grown for the competition – have been created by the artist in collaboration with LOEWE, and crafted from leather. Their large, soft and enveloping shapes invite touch and the possibility of lying in their padded contours, as objects full of surreal and surrealistic potential and humour, but also bursting with beauty.