LONDON — It’s been a heady February for Jonathan Anderson, who as Loewe’s creative director dressed a pregnant Rihanna for her gravity-defying performance at the Super Bowl, and who will stage one of his biggest JW Anderson shows on Sunday during London Fashion Week.
After years of persisting, Anderson is working with his hero Michael Clark, melding his own archives with those of the maverick Scottish choreographer known for marrying classical dance with contemporary art and popular culture.
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Anderson’s fall 2023 show will take place at the Roundhouse in Camden, where Clark’s company has staged many performances. It will be staged in the round with a female bagpiper, a nod to Clark’s origins, and a big focus on music — but no dance performance.
This show will be more about Clark’s iconography than his choreography, and about the enormous impact that Clark’s visual language had on Anderson’s culture and career.
“I was thinking about the idea of Michael Clark as a hero figure. He was revolutionary and he affected me in the way he looked at gender and the idea of the body,” Anderson said in an interview.
“When I was at university, he was like a god in terms of his performances, the posters, the outfits that he wore. He was part of a moment where creatives, designers and artists all worked together,” the designer added.
Thinking about Clark and his creative collaborators also inspired Anderson to dig back into his own archives and examine his work with fresh eyes. He picked one element from every collection he designed since launching JW Anderson in 2008 and mingled it with Clark’s own image bank.
“The idea is the merging of two archives, of two thought processes in two different time periods. There is also the idea of British culture, of rebelling against the system and against politics. I am holding Michael Clark up as a pinup, a hero and asking whether, without the influence of Michael Clark, would I be the person I am today?” Anderson said.
During the interview, Anderson compared Clark and his maverick ways to Vivienne Westwood, who died in December and whose memorial service took place at Southwark Cathedral on Thursday.
“I think that when you look at Britain, there is always this amazing type of anxiety in clothing, something we’re realizing now with the loss of Vivienne Westwood. Ultimately, she is the godmother of British fashion because she went against the system and she was rejected for it.
“Without Vivienne Westwood, we wouldn’t have many brands. She led people like [Lee Alexander] McQueen, [John] Galliano and me. She was a huge inspiration,” he said.
For his fall collection, Anderson riffed on Clark’s costumes, posters, promotional T-shirts and the slogans such as “Y Male,” which Leigh Bowery, another cultural rulebreaker, created for his performances.
Flourishes such as a feathery brown tutu skirt; a furry belt on a dress, or a Tesco supermarket bag turned into a tunic all bear the mark of Clark.
Even Anderson’s signature exaggerated details and proportions seem more fluid this season. It’s clear he’s been thinking about ease of movement, grand gestures and challenging societal norms.
The collection includes a soft, Grecian-style dress with draped shoulders; exaggerated, angular A-line coats; distressed trouser hems that look as if a small animal gnawed at them, and knits with cuffs and borders as round and fat as sausage rolls.
Anderson said the fall collection is one of his favorites and represents an inflection point for the JW Anderson label.
“I have built a vocabulary, too, and this collection is about embracing what I have done. The minute I started to put this collection together, I appreciated the work that the team and I have done over the last 15 years. I own these things. These are my codes and I should embrace them,” he said.
The show itself will be bigger, and grander, than Anderson’s usual minimalist, intimate events.
“I think we should go big. We’ve been around for a while and we now need to own the growth that we’re doing. It’s important that we go up a level,” he said.
His namesake house is in expansion mode, readying a Milan boutique that’s set to open this spring on Via Sant’Andrea.
“We have been looking at growing the business by defining our product offering and restructuring our distribution,” said the brand’s CEO Jenny Galimberti.
“We are now starting to focus on the retailization of the brand. After our London Soho store, which is performing very well, we are excited to open our second store in Milan during the Salone del Mobile in April.”
Anderson has been off to a racing start this year.
Asked about dressing Rihanna for the Super Bowl, Anderson said he didn’t know until the very last minute that she was going to choose his customized, bright red Loewe creation. He said he wanted to create an outfit that wasn’t going to overwhelm her and that reflected her power.
He described her attitude as “insanely modern,” adding that “what I admire about her the most is that she has her own convictions about what she wants to do, what she wants to put out there. I think we all can learn from this.”
Anderson added that seeing Rihanna appear on her floating stage “was one of the most greatest moments I’ve had. It was such a surprise. She just seemed so happy. It’s not really about the clothing in the end. It was more about her as a mother and as a figure of what is possible.”