The runway show continues Loewe’s collaboration with artist Lynda Benglis, who created an installation of monumental bronze sculptures and jewelry pieces.
Lynda Benglis is a giant of postwar American sculptor. Over the course of her six-decade-long career, she has redefined the art object through her ceaseless innovation with form and materiality.
Employing a gestural and physical engagement with matters as diverse as polyurethane, latex, sparkles, paper, plaster, bronze, and water, Benglis has provocatively challenged the notion of what sculpture can be.
For the runway presentation, six large-scale bronze sculptures were selected and cast from a series of clay sculptures Benglis called Elephant Necklace, each made by twisting extruded lengths of soft clay into dynamic forms. Benglis has worked with clay since the early 1990s, comparing her manipulation of the material to a dance. Through enlargement, the marks and imprints of this process become viscerally exaggerated. A range of surfaces—from polished bronze to a matte black patina—reflect light in dramatically different ways, creating a shifting landscape of visual effects.
Loewe’s spring-summer collection focuses on the outline, plays with the sections and alters the proportions. Looking from afar, and then looking closer, zooming in on the details.
It’s a wardrobe in perspective. It’s also about pragmatic coats, blouses, v-neck jumpers, cardigans, jeans, trousers, long legs, waists moving high, and a compact bust. Pockets and slits allow the body to assume certain postures and the items to be defined by gestures.
A reflection on being uptight and the sensuality that breaks it all down. Textured knits, short chunky jumpers, long capes that encase the body, and dilated pullovers that flow around it. Leather is tailored outer skin: sleek coats that can be flipped under the arm on one side like a bag; T-shirts and shorts with chewed hems.
Once again, a random act turns things around. Tops like accumulations of sparkly brooches; imperceptible feathers; outsized pins as closures.
The collection features a muted palette of camel, gray, brown and black touched by accents of red, bougainvillea, tangerine.
For more information on Loewe’s SS24 women’s runway collection, go to Loewe’s website. In the Philippines, Loewe is exclusively distributed by Stores Specialists, Inc., and is located at Shangri-La Plaza Mall East Wing and Greenbelt 3. Visit SSI or follow @ssilifeph on Instagram for more information.
