The American is a concept loaded at the moment. For obvious reasons.
It was therefore striking that Friday, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, two designers from New York on Friday, having their debut as a co-creative directors of Loewe, looked at the idea. And not in the heavy sense of what is the meaning, but in a way that served as a powerful reminder of freedom, ease and simple impulse which once seemed ineffiarably American, especially when expressed in clothing.
In doing so, they have created one of the most refreshing and energetic collections of all season so far – not to mention one of the few spring collections that really looked like in spring.
A paint on the colored field Ellsworth Kelly, “yellow panel with red curve”, suspended at the entrance to the site. There were primary colors on the track and a lack of hassle to what seemed only simple clothes.
The genre that suggested the fantasy of a summer spent in Schmozing with artistic dealers in cocktails at Water Mill or on the Costa Brava with Margaritas Mezcal and bowls of baby and baby tomatoes, pocket books in heaps of salt on the coffee table and wild chat in the air.
There is a trend among American designers, when they arrive in Paris, to be the victim of an inferiority complex; The stereotype that says that France is where real fashion occurs, and New York is for, Ahem, sportswear (the overturned nose). But while obtaining the reins of a large French house – or, in the case of Loewe, a Spanish house which now belongs to a French group – is always considered as a sign of arrival, this can lead the designers to bind in knots trying to prove that they have what it takes.
Some avoid the trap, like Daniel Roseberry, the Texan of Schiaparelli, who skillfully updated the house that surrealism built by combining fantasy and modernity. This season, it meant playing a great game of hide and seek with the body in simple dresses and costumes with hit pea, like small windows on what is below; Dresses that seem to peel off in bands, such as old wallpaper (a reference to the classic “dress of tears” of 1938); A simple black sheath with a life -size white line drawing of a nude of the own sketchbook of Mr. Roseberry superimposed at the front.
But too often, this translates into too complicated and overworked clothes.
Indeed, this is not the first time that Mr. McCollough and Mr. Hernandez have been working in Paris. They spent two seasons at the end of the 2010s showing the mark they founded directly from the fashion school, Proenza Schouler, in the shade of the Eiffel Tower, loading it with decorative extras before returning home to the State Empire with their tail a little between their legs.
They remained the New York sounds and the stars of the local scene, at least until they left their mark in January, but it always seemed that they had their objective in Europe. When they finally returned, the big question that weighs on their debut of Loewe was: had they learned something?
The answer was yes.
“We cannot ignore where we come from,” said McCollough after the show while he and Mr. Hernandez, who had tears in his eyes, were besieged by sympathizers (and parents). “We don’t want to hide from it.”
Instead, they merged their own identity with the history of the brand – both as an old Spanish leather house, with all the know -how that involves, and more recently as one of the great fashion successes under Jonathan Anderson (now at Dior), which has transformed something of an all -access art project.
They did it with leather coats in the shape of a molded bells and sleeveless mini-lows in pure shades of blue, red and yellow which recalled both the Spanish flag and Kelly paint.
With jackets in jeans and jeans “in denim” which were actually treated in hand stretch leather to look like blurred cotton; Leather-striped leather mini-receptions, with stripes based on skin layers, such as plywood; And what looked like small Terry locking towel dresses that turned out to have been printed in 3D and hand painted so that they sparkle like the sun on the water. With transparent plastic pumps, under which socks of different colors could be worn, depending on the outfit: a shoe, many liners, just an excellent idea.
With sportswear, in other words, transformed by technique and confidence so as not to insist too much. It is a kind of American dream, realized.
