JONATHAN ANDERSON, A NEW APPROACH TO FASHION

Profile

His fresh take on the world of fashion led LVMH to appoint him head of Loewe. Now helming both the latter and his own brand, JW Anderson, the talented Irishman is a force to be reckoned with.

NUMÉRO: Collaborations are now common in fashion, but your brand, JW Anderson, works with a very diverse list of artists, from A$ AP Rocky and Gilbert & George to Giles Round. For you, is it natural that fashion today must look outside of itself and take part in a more general conversation about the culture of our times? JONATHAN ANDERSON:

Yes, it absolutely has to. For many years fashion was quite isolated from reality, it was having a dialogue with itself. I felt that things had to open up. It’s obvious that the way we consume has changed. And the way we look at the

luxury industry has changed too; today there’s more responsibility, culturally, environmentally and socially. We’ve become incredibly sensitive, so I think for me it’s about how you break down those barriers.

Is it a positive development in your view?

Yes, and it’s really what makes me enjoy my job. If I was just designing product all day week in week out, I might feel a bit cut off, but things like the Craft Prize, or the many collaborations that I do in both my own brand and at Loewe help me find out what I’m really about.

The way fashion brands work with artists has changed from merely commissioning them to being more altruistic, acting as a curator and putting them in the spotlight. Is that something you enjoy?

It gives you a different merit system. Like the thing we did with Gilbert & George – it was like a fantasy to do. When you turn fantasy into reality, you have to up the game on it, you have to change your approach. And I think that’s what I enjoy. How do you make people think differently?

In 2018 you curated your own exhibition, Disobedient Bodies.

That show is probably one of the most important things I’ve done. It was a question of starting different conversations and dialogues, craft vs. art, art vs. fashion, and I was able to package all the things that I’m into in that one exhibition.

The question has almost become a cliché, but is fashion an art?

I think I’m more inclined to say that both fashion and art serve the same purpose – repurposing how we see ourselves. So I think they become closer and closer, and that’s not a bad thing. I feel that one has more merit than the other, but that’s something that younger people think differently about – they think differently about how they consume imagery.

You are one of the few recent talents in fashion who’s emerged with their own brand and been unanimously celebrated. You seem to have such a clear vision. Is that something you had from the start, or did it come over time?

I’ve always been quite bullish in the way that I approach things. I don’t really entertain the idea of “no,” ultimately. I’m someone who feels they have to get the job done, if that makes sense. It has to be completed. When you do a job like fashion, you become incredibly thick-skinned because you have to. You can’t please everyone, nor should you. You realize that you have to build these amazing teams to be able to execute what you need to do. But in the end you are stuck within yourself doing it. There is a part where, no matter what happens, you have to keep the energy going. In me there’s a drive to fulfil what’s missing in fashion and to search for it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. As a medium we’ve become incredibly Victorian somehow, because we’ve digressed in how we tackle fashion. We are more obsessed by failure than by success. I think it’s probably happened before in fashion: when things become stagnant, we become pessimistic. But in myself there is always this idea that you have to be positive in a system that sometimes feels overwhelming. Because the job is overwhelming; the idea of working for two brands isn’t overwhelming, but the system can really be overwhelming, it can make you very jaded. But there is something in my character that must fight to be able to exist.

In contrast to someone like Raf Simons, who finds the pace of fashion today too crazy.

I think you have to find a way out. It’s like being in a maze, you have to find your way through, discover the best way of delivering something. You can’t be too precious either. When I look back on 2018, and consider where we are politically, socially and culturally, it’s really easy to have very little faith in it, because, going back to the idea of failure, fashion has become very tabloid. “This person did this wrong…” But all industries and all designers have their problems because they’re human, and through that you have to go out to battle something, but you will never be able to change the world. Designers would redesign the world if they could, but they can’t. When you look at fashion, it’s not just the designer – that’s an illusion people have, that the designer is responsible for everything. I feel I’m responsible for everything, but fashion is multi- facetted, there are power structures, stores, trade, all these things you can’t control. And sometimes I feel that instead of looking to shame and take down, we need to look at solutions to protect an industry that is quite fragile. Because we need new talents coming up.

Does the current context allow new talent to emerge?

If there isn’t a funding body for that or for education, then there’s a problem. With both brands we try to take as many people as possible from university, but there is a lack of business awareness, understanding of creativity and of how things work, which is going to have major repercussions.

Do you think we’ve suf ficiently taken into account the societal changes affecting fashion today?

Well, I live in London and there is huge talk of how the high street is a disaster. It’s going down, the figures are bad. And I do feel that the idea of experiential fashion and how we experience culture and consume goods does need to change. But we can only do that if we all work together. It doesn’t mean that the store has become obsolete – it’s relevant because it helps to tell the story which is reality, whereas sometimes there can be a non- reality, an emotional disconnect. So we like to complain a lot, but no one has a solution. If we realized how lucky we are, in this industry, we would be fighting for it in a different way. There are parts that probably can’t be fixed but need to evolve.

Does this have anything to do with our not letting the new generation have enough say?

That’s probably also what happened in the 20s and in the 70s, when you had a change of generation and the

previous generation wouldn’t let go. It probably happens every 20 years when you have two generations rubbing shoulders and fighting over who has the power and who doesn’t. But people are sometimes afraid to give over the reins when they don’t feel it’s solid or mature enough. So we’re in this moment when two tectonic plates are moving. You can see that on social media, in magazines, everywhere. I must admit I’m glad I did a rebranding at Loewe five years ago. I’m lucky to be at the situation I’m in at LVMH. They gave me the time. There is a process in fashion where we have to realize that things do need to crash to be rebuilt. And it will take ten, 20 years. I was very lucky because I was given the freedom to be able to reconfigure an incredibly old house over a period of time. Because if you do it too quickly, the consumer realizes it’s fake. Fake things can work quite quickly, but do they survive? Not really. Because you’re not building on the foundations, there’s no coherence with the past. We’re very dotcom in fashion, we’re very American, it’s like we have to build it now, and it needs to work within six months. You can do that if you’re a business person and you strip down a brand, close stores, cut, cut, cut. These things can be done in six months. But changing the image of a brand doesn’t happen overnight. If it was so easy everyone would be doing it. I wouldn’t have a job.

You’ve worked across the whole spectrum of the fashion industry, from Uniqlo to Loewe. Do you keep this whole spectrum in mind when you design?

Yes, you have to. And you have to know that everything can coexist. We tend to segregate things but we shouldn’t – it’s not how reality works.

If people are afraid of change, it’s perhaps because they feel values are being lost. Your work with craftsmen, and the Craft Prize you founded, contradict that idea. Can handmade things co- exist with the digital world?

Yes. I think there’s a fundamental disconnect in how society sees product. We’ve become desensitized to the idea of making. There is a tangible reality of human beings making things. There is a tangible reality that goods have to be transported around the world. So it’s really important that we open up conversations about things, instead of sitting here being afraid of certain things. We cannot become hysterical about facts, we have to look for a solution. And that is my biggest thing right now. Let’s come up with solutions because we have to do something in order to make it interesting, otherwise, in the end, it’s just another fashion week.

“I feel that instead of looking to shame and take down, we need

to look at solutions to protect an industry that is quite fragile. Because

we need new talents coming up.”