On December 1st, LOEWE opened its first store in the Netherlands. The brand’s flagship Amsterdam shop finds a fitting home in P.C. Hooftstraat, with an elegant black and white storefront that provides a welcome addition to the city’s distinguished shopping district. Led by creative director Jonathan Anderson, LOEWE’s refined blend of art, craft and culture comes to life in this beautiful 129 sqm, two-story space. The store presents a full offering of women’s ready-to-wear and accessories including bags, shoes, scarves, hats, jewellery, wallets, and cardholders, complemented by select pieces from the brand’s ever-growing art collection. 

Echoing the intimate, luxurious feel of other LOEWE spaces including the recently reopened CASA LOEWE Barcelona and the new CASA LOEWE Lisbon flagship on Avenida da Liberdade, the P.C. Hooftstraat store melds artisanal detailing with modern flourish. Handmade, glazed ceramics feature throughout – here in warm shades including red, pink, and amber, they add contrast to the cool, light maple wood shelves and concrete floors, walls and furniture. Podiums crafted from marble, ceramic and glass complete the contemporary atmosphere. These podiums, many of them filled with lightbulbs, are a signature element of LOEWE’s stores, here providing a more industrial counterbalance to the natural textures of earth and clay. 

Furniture choice is also central to the LOEWE design concept, bringing additional harmony to the space. Utrecht Armchairs by Gerrit Thomas Rienveld are composed around a series of stark right angles, which sit alongside elegant and martiniunobtrusive martini side tables. are elegant but unobtrusive, and George Nakashima’s armchairs are the product of a singular philosophy focused on simplicity and respect for the natural grains, contours, and properties of each piece of wood. 

Continuing the brand’s commitment to creating an expansive anthology of art, craft and design, a selection of hand-picked works from the LOEWE collection are placed throughout the store. Ron Nagle’s idiosyncratic ceramics, which emerged from the California Clay movement and quickly created their own, abstracted visual language, are present in the form of two small, glazed cups with thick handles. Jos Devriendt’s Night & Day 383 (2021) greets visitors on the upper floor, the mushroom-like lamp in green celadon and orange raku glaze adds a playful note to the surroundings. Elsewhere, Tomonari Hashimoto’s Untitled (2021) exemplifies the Japanese artist’s tactile process, its swirling surface, created through repeat firing and carbonizing to bring out a rainbow of metal oxides, is reminiscent of an oil slick. Hashimoto was a LOEWE Craft Prize finalist in 2019. 

On the walls, works both large and small invite customers to stop and linger. Through her vivid painting Spring with an Angel (2022) Cian-Yu Bai calls for a reflection on the constant flux and ever-changing perspectives of the world. Antiguan artist and poet Frank Walter’s untitled oil painting featuring a red sailboat is characteristically spirited, while 17th Century Flemish painter Jan Van Kessel’s shells, insects and butterflies offer a powerful study in still life. This varied assembly of mediums, eras and forms is characteristic of LOEWE’s approach to the worlds of art and artisanship, bringing together the historic and the contemporary in a space devoted to intelligent visual expression.