Fashion

Botanica Erotica

Designs by Loewe to help you bloom and flourish

Just when you perhaps thought there was little new in fashion, players like Jonathan Anderson, Coperni and Daniel Roseberry sweep the carpet from under your feet and make you look again at the possibilities, the untrodden landscapes of style.

Northern Irish born Anderson, who has been at the helm of Spanish leather house Loewe for nine years, revels in pushing the boundaries of fashion and flexing his mercurial art on our sense of perception and seduction. The overarching theme of the SS23 collection was the anthurium flower and how this hyper real, glossy species looks and feels so fake with its waxy petals and phallic spadix.

Also known as the flamingo flower, it has long added an exotic touch in European living rooms and has been the accomplice to many a lewd sit-com jokes.

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"There has always been something for me that is slightly knife edge."

Jonathan Anderson

Armed with a sharp wit, Anderson played with the bloom’s symbolic legacy in a knockout collection that fused the utilitarian with the extraordinary and a dash of Jeff Koons’ chutzpah. So, the flamingo plant was cast into sculptural bustiers worn with slinky long skirts; it adorned swingy mini dresses with the blossoms covering each breast (perfect for a wedding) and topped strappy sandals and mules. That surrealist implosion of symbols and trompe l’oeil rippled through the line-up as Anderson played with scale and preppie classics. There were short and frisky tennis dresses alongside outsize grey marl sweatshirts featuring extra-long sleeves and shrunken lambskin jackets. Meanwhile, Spanish history bubbled up in the shape of stripped back sculpted velvet infanta dresses with protruding panier hips that recalled Velaquez’s work Las Meninas, 1656. The new Paseo bag with its pastry like folds and chain is worthy of attention too: ready for an arm swing on that early evening walk.

“There has always been something for me that is slightly knife edge,” says Anderson.