Loewe

Loewe was founded in 1846 as a Madrid leather workshop and remained, for most of its history, an extremely refined but quiet Spanish house. The transformation came in 2013, when LVMH (which acquired the brand in 1996) appointed Jonathan Anderson — the 28-year-old Northern Irish designer behind his own label JW Anderson — as creative director. Anderson's eleven-year tenure (2013–2024) is among the most consequential of his generation. He treated the brand like an editorial project: book partnerships with photographers, a Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, a deep relationship with potters and ceramicists, the famous Puzzle bag, and a series of fashion shows that read as performance art (the trompe-l'œil dresses, the helium balloon coats, the asparagus-stem heels). Loewe became the most-Googled luxury house multiple years running and an unmistakable benchmark for what 'craft-led contemporary luxury' could feel like. In 2024 Anderson departed to lead Dior, and Proenza Schouler's Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough took over Loewe — a transition the industry is still measuring. Whatever happens next, Anderson's tenure changed the brand permanently: Loewe is no longer a quiet Spanish workshop. It is a global cultural reference for what an artisanal house can be when treated as a thinking practice rather than a marketing exercise.