‘Fashion’s about selling dreams’
His fashion moment is seemingly unending – and for very good reason. Here, Jonathan Anderson talks broken Britain, cult bags and why he refuses to work with ‘yes’ people…
‘i never went into this industry to be mediocre – that would just be depressing. I went into this industry to be the best,’ says Jonathan Anderson. He admits it’s not very ‘British’ to say this and acknowledges it could be perceived as arrogant, but this is his focus and ultimately what drives him. ‘It’s like running a marathon; you don’t enter the race if you don’t want to come first. I do see fashion like that; it is about winning. I know it sounds kind of ridiculous, but if you want to do good collections and you want to make a successful business, then you have to be out to win.’
I first met Jonathan at the beginning of his race, when he worked out of a windowless studio on Shacklewell Lane in Dalston, East London, and lived close by in a flat above a computer-game shop, furnished with chairs he’d picked out of a skip. Back then, he had a team of four, fitted his designs on a boy, and his debut A/W ’11 womenswear collection, with its hairy hiking boots and silk paisley kilts over matching trousers (inspired by Granny Anderson’s penchant for wearing aprons over trackie bottoms), had been received with rave reviews. We went for lunch and he told me that he worked 24/7 – including Christmas Day. Then in his twenties, he was all lanky limbs with floppy sandy hair and a milky County Derry complexion. Initially, he’d set out wanting to become an actor and trained at the Studio Theatre in Washington DC, but decided acting wasn’t for him and had moved back to Dublin, picking up work in the department store Brown Thomas. A chance encounter there, over the Prada display rack, with the late Manuela Pavesi (Miuccia Prada’s then right-hand woman) inspired him to enrol at the London College of Fashion, where he studied menswear, graduating in 2005 before returning to work with Pavesi as a visual merchandiser for Prada. He launched his career with JW Anderson menswear in 2008 and, two years later, due to popular demand, added womenswear.
Four years after our first encounter, in 2016, I interviewed him again. By this point, industry darling, trend provoker and fashion agitator, he was working out of his new East End headquarters, all concrete floors, white-washed walls and interesting sculptures. He’d clocked up an impressive array of accolades: winning both British men’s and womenswear designer of the year at the Fashion Awards in 2015, which was unheard of, as well as nailing commercial collaborations with Topshop (which sold out) and Uniqlo (which is ongoing, as is Converse). At just 29, the same year he collaborated with Donatella Versace on her Versus line, he won the backing of Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH, the luxury goods conglomerate, and richest man in Europe, who bought a minority stake in JW Anderson. In fact, Arnault had such faith in Jonathan, he also handed him the Lvmhowned Loewe brand, Spain’s answer to Hermès, to creatively direct. Aside from the pressure of overseeing two brands – which he seemed to relish – it was clear that what set him apart from his contemporaries wasn’t just his ability to anticipate the moment in clothes, but that he was equally conversant in commercial. As he said then, ‘You can’t be a fantasist. It’s impossible. This is a rag trade, you’ve gotta sell it. Quicker. Fast. Faster than ever. It would be awful to produce product that nobody wanted.’
Clearly, that hasn’t been a problem. Those of us who have invested in a JW Anderson bag (bolt pierced, anchor logoed, the Keyts, or the Cap) or a Loewe one (Puzzle, Hammock, Gate, Bow, Flamenco, Amazona, Barcelona, Elephant, Basket, to name just the most memorable) can appreciate his prodigious talent for multiple bag hits – the holy grail of any luxury goods brand. As for the clothes, they often hit the spot where the retired Phoebe Philo (of old Céline) left off – judging merely by the volume of JW Anderson and Loewe worn at the shows by both flamboyant street-style professionals and low-key journalists.
‘Recently, I heard someone say I’m less hot-headed,’ muses Jonathan, now 34, whose reputation for having a fiery temper precedes him. So, is he? ‘I think so, yes. When I first took on Loewe and had my own brand, there was an anxiety, because you’re trying to prove [yourself ] all the time and that comes with making harsh decisions. A lot of people don’t like that, they’re petrified of people who think on the spot or have a certain viewpoint. For me, I have a corridor that I work within, very accurately. I am very black or white.’
Today, once again, we are meeting in his new East End headquarters – significantly larger than the last – where he has been installed since February. It is now July, and his studio is still in a state of moving-in with his art and objects yet to be unpacked. You can see why: he lives in London and Paris (where the Loewe design studio is based) and shuttles between both cities every week, plus Madrid (for Loewe’s bag development and manufacturing) every month. ‘I need a five-day week and I need it to be full. The minute I have a gap in the day, I can lose the momentum and then I’m done. And I need to go quick. I can’t do a long meeting.
I need people to come prepared, and if they’re not prepared then I won’t do it.’ This must be music to the ears of his CEO, Jenny Galimberti, who started with JW Anderson last September. I ask her what impresses her most about Jonathan: ‘He’s fantastic to work with; a constant source of ideas. Intellectually challenging, multifaceted, and with a huge range of conversation topics, from his passion for ceramics to running our business, from
‘you don’t enter the race if you don’t want to come first. fashion is about winning’
politics and macro-economics to really just about anything… We never get bored.’
how does jonathan himself approach being one of the few designers in the industry straddling two businesses – a luxury giant with 113 stores and his own brand, which will open its first flagship in London’s Soho early next year. He says he sees Loewe as a ‘cultural brand’ and JW as a ‘cultural agitator’; he pictures his Loewe woman in a lifestyle space and his JW woman as someone who ‘wants us to push the needle’. With 18 collections a year to come up with – 10 for Loewe and eight for JW – work is a military operation. He splits the year into four, working on two different ‘chapters’ every quarter, ‘very methodically, always nine months in advance, because I like to work layers and layers and layers into it. I don’t work last minute, it can’t be a stress, it has to be very plotted out.’
He still thrives on the pressure, both critical and commercial: ‘There is definitely more pressure on designers who are now judged on their sales performance as well as their creativity. For me, it’s like adrenaline, I need that level of heightened-ness to make me feel like I have to continue to prove.’ Yet despite being in it to win it, he refuses to allow himself to think he’s winning: ‘I never feel that it’s there – if it was, I don’t know if I’d do it any more. I have to continually feel like the underdog.’ As for what he believes it takes to be a successful designer today: ‘You can’t club five days a week, you can’t drink copious amounts of alcohol, you can’t do drugs because you have to have the head space; this is what the job has become, incredibly professionalised. You have to be disciplined, like an athlete, you know?’
While he wears the typical nondescript uniform of a celebrated designer – sweatshirt, crumpled linen trousers and duffed-up Loewe trainers – his staff are scurrying about in their gym kits because today is the annual JW Anderson sports day. They all look pretty anxious about the prospect of doing the egg and spoon race in the pouring rain. But sport is close to Jonathan’s heart. His father, Willie Anderson, who he describes as both ‘incredibly supportive and incredibly outspoken’, is the 27-capped Irish rugby international star and rugby union coach.
‘My father grew up on a farm and decided he was going to captain the Irish rugby team, having never played rugby – and he did it. Then he became a coach, which in a weird way is exactly the same as a fashion designer, in that you get hired and fired. As a teenager, I saw my father being fired in spectacular fashion, but he would be like, “Just because I got fired, I will not stop. I will go on to a better team.” You realise how success-driven that is, you kind of get hardened to it and that’s what sticks with me; that drive.’ It was both growing up with a father determined to prove himself on the world stage and living through the troubles in ’90s Northern Ireland that
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‘I HAVE TO CONTINUALLY FEEL LIKE THE UNDERDOG’