On Saturday, LOEWE showcased its Spring Summer 2023 Men’s Collection at Paris Fashion Week. The show circles around eco experimentation and the new age of technology.
The LOEWE SS23 showcase almost feels like a dream; the show, hosted in a glaringly white space, opens with models growing over the horizon and slowly drawing near. As the show continues, it escalates in weirdness, with chia plants, cats wort, and digital screens appearing on an assortment of coats and sneakers.
Developed in collaboration with Paula Ulargui Escalona, the plants are the result of an experimental process. And yes, they are bona fide plants that took 20 days of regular watering and maintenance to reach the desired level of growth in a specially constructed polytunnel on the outskirts of Paris.
It is a “fusion of the organic and the fabricated, carried with the bluntly affirmative, matter-of-the-fact tone that is essentially LOEWE,” highlighted in a press statement.
Also, by fusing technology with nature, birds flying, fish swimming, water dripping and humans kissing were projected on screens adorning apparel. This poetic vision nods at the real and the digital, the VR and AR experiences popular today.
But enough about the theatrics, and let’s talk clothes.
This season’s offerings see signature shapes reduced to their archetypical crudeness, standardised and then inflated, shrunken, sliced or left as they are. Staples – the bomber, hoodie, sweatshirt, polo, shirt, track pants, waxed jacket, parka, and shorts – honour the nuances of nature; made in padded nappa, or ozone-treated cotton, these pieces look as though they’ve been buried underground and wallowed in soil. In solid colours: neutral colour palettes accented with bright accents, they’d be perfect for your summer wardrobe. Archetype tote bags, hard cases, the flow runners, and puzzle bags in a solid-colour iteration round up the collection.
For Spring Summer, LOEWE aims to expand perceptions and boundaries on the materiality of clothes making. Simultaneously, educating the audience on how technology and nature can affect/influence one another.
(Images: LOEWE SS23)
