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“Don’t worry, just fire away,” says designer Jonathan Anderson. He’s signing a pile of books for his latest exhibition. “I can concentrate on two things at once.” The show, entitled ‘On Foot’ and installed at London’s Otter Waterman gallery, connects multiple artworks through the prism of the city. Next week, the 39-year-old Northern Irishman will switch metropolises for New York to collect one of the fashion industry’s most substantive accolades: International Designer of the Year at the CFDA Fashion Awards. Today, he is in the unassuming north London building that houses JW Anderson, the brand he founded in 2008.
In the years since, Anderson has steered himself through the perilous reefs of hot-young-designerdom to mature into a wunderkind who continues to reinvent, surprise — and sell. It is a decade since LVMH asked him to take on Loewe, the then-dusty Spanish leather goods house that was this year named “hottest brand in the world” by the attention-economy aggregator Lyst. Along the way, he has repeatedly proved that he can concentrate on at least two things at once: whether in womenswear or menswear, in London, Milan, or Paris, for JW Anderson or Loewe, and in fashion or beyond.
Anderson’s schedule leaves no time to spare. So, we jump straight into a conversation — reported here with light editing — in which Vogue attempts to read the barometer of one of the greatest fashion designers of our times.
Vogue: You are about to receive the 2023 CFDA Award for International Designer of the Year. But right now, in your mental timetable for both of the houses you work with, what are you designing and working on?
I’ve planned out everything until the end of 2024. Because of calendars and teams and diaries and everything else, you end up working on whatever it’s going to be a year in advance. So, I know that at Loewe we will be focusing on a huge project that has been three years in the making and which now finally is coming up. There are a whole lot of things; shows, store openings, and more. Once you plug all those in, it’s not often you do things like this [he gestures at the catalogue]. And these are enjoyable, important things. As much as I love fashion there is this escape side in exhibitions because they are more personal. And, I feel like the bigger that Loewe becomes, and because of where JW Anderson has gone, I end up needing this kind of escape.
Vogue: So that you’re not just ticking the boxes?
Also, I think maybe that’s why, I hope, I will still have a job in the future: JW has never been formulaic and neither has Loewe. It’s interesting now that people see Loewe as this luxury brand, as if it just happened last year. That is strange for me. It is amazing what Rihanna and Beyoncé [both prominent recent Loewe-wearers] can do. It’s been a crazy year, actually. A really interesting one.
Vogue: Last year you told GQ that your father, Willie, had inspired an ambition to be seen as someone who is at the very top of his game, as he was when he captained the Irish rugby team. This award is a pretty strong marker of that.
It’s amazing to be able to be recognised. Everyone loves recognition — and anyone who pretends that they don’t loves it even more. I’m very humbled by it. I’ve been working for a bit of time now and I feel that I’ve worked pretty hard to get where I’m at. There have been a lot of bits of luck along the way but a lot of it has been about sticking at it. It’s easy to be popular in a moment. It’s relatively easy to be popular for a year. Or even to have a four-year cycle. But to try and keep it going? When I joined Loewe it was tiny. I don’t think anybody thought it was going to be what it has become today. But, I believed in it and I felt if I did the work it was going to happen. I just love the work. And I love to be able to change along the way as well, because I always think that when things get really good you have to change them — and this is the hardest thing.
You have to realise that you’re just as major as your last cycle. And I love a blank sheet each time. There are some people I really admire. If you look at Phoebe [Philo] or Hedi [Slimane] or Helmut Lang, where there is a very tight aesthetic, I really appreciate that. But, that’s not how I work. I don’t have one singular type of aesthetic — it is about the curating of something.
Vogue: How do you compartmentalise working for your own brand and Loewe?
There are two different teams, in two different countries. The minute I get on the Eurostar I switch off. They are both two very different projects.
Vogue: But you are the membrane.
There are some things that will crossover and other things that don’t, but I respond to what I am shown, ultimately.
Vogue: Whether as an exhibition curator or a designer you engage a lot with other artists and craftspeople. In culture — and this can be tricky from a fashion point of view — I think there is a perceived hierarchy of art forms…
I believe the same thing.
Vogue: So, how do you choose who to work with, and in what way?
I have to believe in it. With Loewe we just did two shows with Lynda Benglis: I find her one of the greatest living sculptors. And at Loewe we have the means to do that. We installed her water fountains, which hadn’t been installed since the 1970s: we were committed to showing what you would see in a major gallery. And we won’t compromise on it. I think sometimes “fashion art” can be — well, first of all, there’s a taste level thing, people will pick the wrong people.
Vogue: Making status choices for perceived clout?
Yeah. I don’t see Lynda Benglis as a status choice. I just think she is incredibly important. Recently we worked with Julien Nguyen, who is an amazing new painter with Matthew Marks Gallery. We did the big digital screens with him at menswear. In the end for me it’s all about the edit. You’re showing the taste level. And art is not the easiest because… you have to be obsessed to understand what is happening, and what is interesting in the moment — to understand what is important right now.
Vogue: That emphasis on “right now” is significant in fashion too — because beyond the intention of design and the product that is its result, any success is contingent on the consumer appetite that exists at the moment of release…
And weirdly if we look at economics, I think art and fashion are moving very, very, very close together. Although no one will admit it.
Vogue: Especially on the art side, because of hierarchy.
When I did ‘Disobedient Bodies’ at the Hepworth Wakefield, that was about this idea of stripping away this hierarchy in terms of the design process. It was looking at, say, Madame Grès and Jean Arp, or looking at [artist Alberto] Giacometti and Helmut Lang: what is the difference? There is the value difference, yes. But ultimately, the creative importance [of them all] is huge. For me, seeing a Helmut Lang skeleton on a T-shirt and a Giacometti, they both have had a cultural influence. We just apply a different metric to them.
Look at the Louis Vuitton Fondation. They are doing dream shows. It takes someone like Bernard Arnault to come up with the idea [Anderson snaps his fingers] to make that possible. Because other institutions simply cannot make these shows possible. If you were to be really crass about it, to really boil it down, ultimately — and as much as art would never want to admit it — art also makes luxury goods. Art is for the 1 per cent. Yes, it can be consumed [by engagement] but in terms of ownership, there is a different thing at play.
So, in the next 10 years I think fashion and art will come increasingly close together because I think both are starting to rely on each other for advertising and endorsement. Look at Yayoi Kusama [and Louis Vuitton]… the artist and brand are both helped. Andy Warhol birthed this idea of pop culture that ultimately younger people are consuming, and the hierarchies are different now. In fact, you realise that all these hierarchies are starting to disappear through inter-pollination.
Vogue: And it applies to other cultural disciplines; cinema, literature, music. Look at Pharrell at Louis Vuitton: that was a fashion show but it was also…
It was also something else. Often the initial thing when people see “something else” is they reject it — that’s what I find fascinating. Sometimes, I think we love to reject things, and when things are new, sometimes people reject them. It might not be about the garment but how [what we see] is structured; we become used to digesting things a certain way.
Vogue: As well as art, you are closely engaged with craft: what’s the difference between the two?
I’ve never seen that there is a difference. And I don’t know how we ended up in this situation [that there apparently is]. When you look at someone like Lucie Rie [the late British potter], I don’t see any difference between her and a contemporary artist — they are both putting out a created thing, whether it be an object or a painting. I think we intrinsically compartmentalise. Which is why we have built all these structures. But why do we have these structures?
Vogue: To make sense of the world?
But I don’t think people work like that really. Just because you see all ironwork in one space it does not mean you see the ironwork, you know? You might need to see the ironwork beside the renaissance sculpture to understand why the ironwork exists.
Vogue: So adjacency is important?
In today’s world — how we consume imagery and how we are bombarded by it — I think it is interesting to see dialogues. And the more dialogues we have, the less the creative problems become — and ultimately other problems also.
Vogue: Speaking of dialogues, adjacencies and hierarchies, fashion is currently subject to critical scrutiny from multiple angles — in terms of sustainability and environmental impact, or in terms of the ethnic and gender identity of designers at “big” houses.
Well, we are still in the period of recreational outrage — we are outraged by everything. But, at the same time, this is a very different time period. I joined Loewe 10 years ago and a lot has changed and we do have to change. So, when we question the idea of diversity, and gender and gender equality then, yes, of course things should be done. And, environmentally, it’s not only that there are things that should be done, it’s that there is no choice.
You know, there are some things that my grandfather told me. And I grew up in Northern Ireland at a very complex time. So, there are some sort-of mantras which I have. I work for a brand. And I own a brand. I am also an individual. The brand is neither physical nor individual. It is not a person, but an entity. Loewe is an entity that has been going since 1846 and which survived a revolution, bankruptcies, many things. I don’t own Loewe, but my job is to make it last. So, my whole thing is that I have my own political viewpoints, my own financial viewpoints, and my own religious viewpoints, but also that all of these are private viewpoints.
I think what we are trying to do is undo the past in the present. And we’re all incredibly impatient, because all our social platforms are like that. So we want a solution. I feel like if I post something today, OK, yes, it will get a bit of awareness. But is it a long-term solution? No. So if I want to make a long-term solution to something, I have to do that with what I have control of.
With the environment, and maybe I am old fashioned, but I feel like I do what I have to do and need to do. I pay my taxes, and I would hope that the government is thinking of how they’re running the business of the country, because that’s what we pay them for. And I would hope they would be hiring brains in order to tell businesses what to do. Collectively, businesses need to do this together, because you can’t undo the Industrial Revolution in 10 minutes.
Vogue: But there is such an expectation of insta-change…
This is where we get very wound up. Because it is more exciting and it is certainly easier for people to hate something than to constructively apply change. This is what I find sad sometimes, that we don’t come more often to the table with solutions.
Vogue: Bad reviews are always much more gleefully read than balanced reviews.
On another level, my whole thing is: does connoisseurship even exist anymore? It’s a very complex place for connoisseurship today… You know, I’m all about dreamers, but I see myself as a practical person, and a realist. Ultimately, I hate bullshit.
Going back to the “do we need more diversity amongst designers” question: Hell yeah, we do. We are in 2023, and we have had political situations and evolution that have got us here. Although there are also other aspects; there is the educational system, and there are the businesses that need to do the groundwork for it to become.
Vogue: Because after you manifest, you have to create the conditions for something to be.
We are in a period of generational change. And we are at a point where an industry is trying to assess where it’s going. Ultimately, the industry will look and then it will go where the consumer is. Being a creative director I believe is a lot more complex than people actually think. I don’t think people can just say, “Oh, we’re gonna put this person here, and it’s gonna work.” I don’t think it works that way. I think there are a lot of examples.
It was very different being at a brand (Loewe) that was doing 100 million compared to what it is doing today. The job becomes different. I have been able to evolve. But when you land in a brand — in a large brand — I think there is an underestimation of the work and the job that faces you, because [fashion] is like a churning machine at the moment. I do back the team that I’m in, but I do also think that LVMH and Bernard Arnault are very long term. The way in which they run the businesses is long term. This is not football; you’re building a product that has to go to the marketplace. It takes time to work, time to enter the system. If in eight years it doesn’t work, well, then it didn’t work. But it is better to stick to the programme.
I’m a believer in change, but I think irrational change can lead to a toxic environment. I am merely a guardian of Loewe for as long as I am here. My job is to build it in a way that it is built on stone, because I would be doing an incredibly bad design job if it were to collapse.
With my own brand I actually like the idea that my brand will be this one thing. I don’t need it to be a billion dollar business: bigger does not always mean better. And you have to enjoy the creative part of it. As you get older, you change and your taste changes. It’s very different [for me] now, from when I did ruffled shorts.
Vogue: You change, tastes change, generations change.
Yeah. Although at the same time you can reinvent. And reinvention has to come, I believe, when it is least expected. It’s maybe a cliché but look at the work of Madonna. This was genius reinvention. She was rebuilding her brand each time. You can say I represented this, and now I represent that — we change.
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