For Loewe’s 180th anniversary, the duo’s third collection traded brand-building for preppy sportswear in Spanish leather. The leather made the case. The styling tricks, repeated across 64 looks, did not
PARIS — Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez showed their third Loewe collection on Friday morning in a circular scaffold theater at the Château de Vincennes, using it to shift from building an image to selling clothes. The Loewe Spring 2027 lineup ran to 64 looks and marked the house’s 180th anniversary. It worked from preppy American sportswear (polos, trenches, striped shirts, boat shoes), recut in Spanish leather and colored jade, tangerine, electric blue and marigold.
The designers said outright that this was the goal. “How do you bring clothes into that conversation?” Hernandez said, after two seasons he described as spent on brand building. The show notes called the result “a proposition for dressing.” The answer came in two registers that never fully met. The leather and beadwork made a serious case for Loewe’s workshops, while a layer of styling inversions did much of the talking and little of the work.
Skived Leather Makes the Collection’s Best Argument
Leather was the collection’s most controlled element. The striped jackets were made of skived leather, with the color blocking done by thinning and piecing the hide rather than printing it. Summer-weight leather shirtdresses and trapeze dresses molded in plongé nappa came next. Cropped bombers and Harrington jackets with draped leather overlays kept the volume at the hip. In these pieces, the sportswear idea and the house’s leather heritage were the same idea, and this was the only part of the show where that was true.
The glass-bead pieces did similar work. They developed them with Cécile Feilchenfeldt, a finalist for the 2025 Loewe Craft Prize, and turned a striped shirt into a bead-fringed slip dress. A cotton staple became something only a workshop can make, and that was the transformation the whole collection promised.
Backward Polos Turn a Twist Into a Formula
The weaker material came from the styling. Polos were cut to be worn back to front, caps were turned around, ties were tucked into shirts, and capri pants came with socks. Any one of these inversions is a styling note. Repeated across 64 looks, they became the default move, and the clothes underneath them (an electric blue windbreaker, a striped shirt, white micro shorts) were standard sportswear. A wardrobe pitch depends on pieces that hold up once the styling comes off, and too many of these gave no reason to buy them without it.
The structural problem went further. The show notes promised Spanish Baroque (splayed waists, painterly sashes, drapes) alongside American pragmatism. The Baroque arrived as trim instead: silk scarves at trouser hems and dress necklines, and plasticized resin collars in gold and fire red on trenches and coats. These details decorated the sportswear without changing its cut. Old world and new world sat side by side on the same garment and never merged.
A Theater-in-the-Round for a Reality Pitch
Casper Mueller Kneer Architects built a two-level circular structure of white scaffolding, veiled in sheer fabric and modeled on Shakespeare’s Globe and La Scala. It was the most theatrical setting the duo has used at Loewe, and it framed what they called their most practical collection. A house asking buyers to see a wardrobe staged it as spectacle. The designers also leaned on autobiography, citing their New England upbringing and Hawaiian florals recalled from their spring 2012 Proenza Schouler collection. That raised a question the floral cutout dresses and 3D-flower minis did not settle: whether Loewe is taking on the designers’ vocabulary faster than they are taking on Loewe’s.
The 180th Anniversary Lived Mostly in the Bags
The anniversary was clearest in the accessories. The Amazona 180 appeared in supple leather, alongside a featherlight East-West Puzzle Charm in leather and croc-embossed leather. The Pasito crossed a drawstring dust bag with a rigid box bag, and a soft messenger reworked the Loewe knot as a cord closure. In each case, the archival reference and the new proposal sat in the same object. The ready-to-wear made almost no comparable claim on the archive. For a milestone season, the clothes deferred to the bags.
That matters beyond the runway. LVMH reported that Fashion & Leather Goods revenue fell 5 percent on a reported basis and 1 percent organically in the first half of 2026, with organic growth returning in the second quarter. It cited “new creative momentum” at Loewe but gave no figures for the brand. McCollough and Hernandez were named in March 2025 to succeed Jonathan Anderson. They now have to show that the momentum reaches past the Amazona and the Puzzle. The results don’t say how much of Loewe’s business comes from ready-to-wear. This collection argued for a bigger share without yet giving buyers a clear core to order around.
The best answer to Hernandez’s question came in leather: the molded nappa trapeze dress and the skived striped jacket. Most of the rest was still styling.
See the complete collection below:
Images courtesy of Loewe
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