Under the name ‘Crafted World’, the first public exhibition of the Spanish fashion house Loewe has opened its doors in the Chinese city of Shanghai. The exhibition will be on display until 5 May 2024 and from there will travel to different parts of the world to offer an interactive, immersive and complete journey through the company’s 178-year history. It traces the time from its foundation in Madrid in 1846 to the present day and the new “golden age” in which the company finds itself under the creative direction of British fashion designer Jonathan Anderson.
With an exhibition space of around 1,600 square metres and the central courtyard of the Shanghai Exhibition Centre, built in 1955, which with its eclectic style and 93,000 square metres is one of the most unique buildings in the Chinese city, Loewe’s management does not hesitate to emphasise that this ‘Crafted World’ is the first public exhibition that the company has organised in its entire lifespan. An event that is the first sign of the management’s intention to present the company’s entire history and tradition of craftsmanship to an international audience.
This had been a challenge that Loewe was unable to overcome in the late 1980s and early 1990s, years that culminated in the 1996 takeover by LVMH, an international French holding company specialising in luxury goods. Enrique Loewe, the last representative of the Loewe family to remain at the helm of the company and complete the sale to LVMH, likes to recall (as he has done in various forums) that at the beginning of Loewe’s internationalisation phase, the Italian luxury brands carried out positioning work that was as decisive as it was detrimental to the interests of Spanish companies, preventing a brand of Loewe’s stature, “Made in Spain”, from asserting itself as a quality superior to the “Made in Italy” brand.
It is an issue that has never compromised the quality and history of craftsmanship that Loewe has always sought to defend and which the house has been able to escape thanks to its integration into the LVMH portfolio. The group was a one under which Loewe underwent an uneven development, although Anderson was able to bring about a decisive turning point with his arrival as the new creative director in 2013. This was the moment when one of the most stable, fruitful and profitable periods in Loewe’s history began, but also an international period for a Spanish company, controlled by a French group and led by a British designer, which maintains its focus on Asia as a reference and growth market.
It was in Asia, where Italian companies had not yet finished expanding their presence, that Loewe’s international growth phase began and where the company found fertile ground on which to present its history and craftsmanship. An opportunity that Loewe is now responding to by organising this exhibition from Shanghai. Anderson was also responsible for curating this exhibition, which the British designer wanted to present as a “tribute to all the artisans in the world who have dedicated their lives to handmade products”.
In this sense, ‘Crafted World’, according to Loewe, “offers visitors the opportunity to immerse themselves in iconic designs”. It also sheds light on the “cultural collaborations that have driven Loewe’s development since its founding in Madrid in 1846 by a group of leather craftsmen” who made it “one of the world’s leading luxury fashion houses”. The exhibition therefore explores Loewe’s background, “characterised by creativity, innovation and excellence in craftsmanship”, following its journey from its beginning in the 19th century, through to its appointment as official supplier to the Spanish royal family, its acquisition by LVMH in the 20th century and the opening of its first shop in Shanghai at the beginning of the 21st century, and its “rebirth under the leadership of Jonathan Anderson”.
Above all, the exhibition aims to be understood as “a celebration of the craftsmanship and artistic techniques that have been passed down through the centuries”. These are techniques and processes “that have long been supported by the Loewe Foundation, the annual ‘Loewe Foundation Craft Prize’ and Loewe’s many collaborations with artisans from around the world”.
178 years of history, for the first time in one exhibition
Alongside Anderson, the exhibition was conceived in collaboration with the renowned architecture firm OMA and its creative and design department, which is responsible for the conception and design of the atmospheres of the various Prada fashion shows, among other things, which has organised space to be an immersive tour structured around a series of six thematic areas. There is even a “pronunciation tunnel” designed with the aim of learning how to pronounce the name “Loewe” correctly.
The exhibition begins with the section “Born from craftsmanship”, where a selection of key pieces will be on display, such as the first personalised leather goods, early editions of bags like the Amazon, Flamenco and Puzzle, works by Picasso and Almodóvar, recent collaborations with Anthea Hamilton and outfits for Rihanna and Beyoncé.
From here, the exhibition moves on to “Welcome to Spain”, an area that places special emphasis on Loewe’s Spanish heritage. This is achieved with the help of photographs and campaign videos developed with Steven Meisel, Tyler Mitchell and Gray Sorrenti, as well as ceramics by Pablo Picasso and editions of basket and bucket bags made in collaboration with Spanish artisans.
This is followed by “The Atelier”, which aims to emphasise the value of the artisanal process that the company follows in the development of its creations. Here there is a two metre high replica of the “Howl’s Moving Castle” bag, which was created especially for the exhibition.
This leads off into “Fashion Without Limits”, an area that conveys the feeling of attending a Loewe fashion show, where a presentation of 69 women’s and men’s outfits by Anderson enter into a dialogue with works of art from the Loewe collection, such as the bronze sculpture “Idol” (1956) by William Turnbull, the textile work “The Intermediate-Dangling Hairy Hug” (2018) by Haegue Yang or the glazed ceramic “Mireille Kamyanya, Congo” (2022) by Zizipho Poswa.
The last of the six areas is “United in Craft”, which shows a selection of pieces from the annual Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, together with ceramic pieces from the Ming and Qing dynasties that inspired Loewe’s “Chinese Monochrome” collection 2023, or various “Elephant” bags developed by artisans from Kenya and Tanzania as part of the collaboration with the charity initiative Knot on My Planet. According to Loewe, the section is intended to celebrate “the magic of DIY” and at the end of which the exhibition ends with “Unexpected Dialogues”.
The final part features a space organised around a series of nine immersive rooms where you can discover the creative universes that have inspired the most important Loewe collaborations and collections of the last decade. Here you will also find a replica of master potter Ken Price’s studio in New Mexico, Japanese ceramic pieces, fairytale scenes by Suna Fujita, tactile rugs by John Allen and a replica of a jade quarry.
Three of the nine sub-areas are reserved to emphasise the influence of the Arts & Crafts movement in its current phase under Anderson, as seen in animated projections of William Morris wallpaper, tiles inspired by the organic motifs of William de Morgan and a ‘floating mobile garden’ built in an infinity hall of mirrors inspired by C.F.A. Voysey.
Before the public enters a courtyard with half a dozen reinterpretations by Álvaro Leiro of traditional Galician gabardines with fringes of reed, straw and heather, visitors are guided “through a specially selected gift shop with exclusive products and a selection of books” so that they can “immerse themselves in the ‘Crafted World’ of Loewe long after leaving the exhibition”. Finally, the exhibition is presented as a “story that takes viewers to the sights and sounds of Spain”, to “the intricacies of the workshops” and to “the many steps required to bring a Loewe design to life”, offering a “multimedia tour of the house’s support for craftsmanship around the world”, according to the Spanish company.
With this in mind, “Crafted World” proposes a tour that goes from recreating the “experience of a fashion show in a room exhibiting a series of looks from the Jonathan Anderson era” to “its culmination in a series of nine spectacular interactive spaces that take the public into the artworks and creative universes that have inspired the collaboration with Loewe over the last decade”.
This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.ES. Translation and edit by: Rachel Douglass.