“RADICAL reduction” is what Jonathan Anderson coined when he pondered the outcome of stripping things back. For Loewe’s spring-summer 2025 collection, he explored the concept of commanding attention through no noise.
Could you take the excess away and be left with a silhouette that remained as bold and interesting as one with details? I think the answer may be yes.
As with everything that Anderson does, construction and materialism are at the heart. This season, however, he focused on the line that engineered a look. Being quite literally with this, boning and wiring were seen suspended through the sheer impressionist floral fabrics of dresses that had wide widths and dipped backs, playing with visual high-lows through undulation.
Beyond the bouncing and flowing curves, the collection also saw Anderson play with elongation. How can you reduce to expand? The simple conclusion was to remove any form of bottom half clothing.
Specifically, he introduced ultra-ultra sequinned mini dresses that showcased a special in-house four-way knitting technique that puts emphasis on each sequin; as it lays flat as you knit across creating a scale-like effect. Speaking backstage, the designer explained his draw to removing the posterior: “theres something which is sexual but not, there’s a formality but there’s also not”.
Proving Loewe’s leading position when it comes to craft, there was a truly show-stopping moment of savoir-faire by the brand: the Mother of Pearl trenches. Seemingly a natural evolution from the menswear copper coat from AW23 by Elie Hirsch, these coats were made from the natural material from the inner layer of shells, then cut into specific shapes, and finally puzzled together.
Clearly a work of art in itself, Anderson also displayed prints from Van Gogh and portraits of Frédéric Chopin and Johann Sebastian Bach. Returning to the question of reduction, he wanted to refigure our focus on specifics.
“Sometimes through sheer image taking we kind of burn out the image. We seem to always magnetically go to them because they must mean something” said Anderson. “We want to be part of something even if we don’t understand it”.
Though the explanation of meaning still may not be as obvious, SS25 did offer some answers. Firstly, clothes can be equally as intriguing without the extras – most of the time they simply aren’t needed anyway. And secondly, next season requires you to lose your trousers.
by Imogen Clark