Loewe was founded in 1846 in Madrid by a group of Spanish leather craftsmen, and the brand originated in 1876 when Enrique Loewe y Roessberg, a German craftsman, joined the group.[7]
By the 1970s, Loewe was expanding into perfumes and fashion with the creation of the Loewe anagram logo, designed by Spanish painter Vicente Vela. Giorgio Armani and Laura Biagiotti subsequently designed Loewe's womenswear collections.[9]
In 1986, LVMH bought the rights to Loewe's international distribution.[9] It acquired Loewe completely in 1996. That year, Loewe had sales of about $200 million, among the smallest of LVMH's companies; ready-to-wear was responsible for 10 percent of that total.[10] By 1997, Narciso Rodriguez joined the company as new creative director[11] and the brand had its first Paris runway presentation at LVMH headquarters in the fall/winter 1998 season.[12] Both José Enrique Oña Selfa (2000-2007)[9] and Stuart Vevers (2008-2013)[13][14] followed. During Vever's tenure, Loewe scaled back fashion to concentrate on handbags, leather apparel and a substantial gift business based on leather picture frames and leather boxes.[15]
Jonathan Anderson became Loewe's creative director in 2013.[16] His first ready-to-wear collections for Loewe were presented in 2014. He has also been deploying a series of publicity campaigns by Steven Meisel and Damien Ropero for the stillife.[17]
Since 2014, Loewe's headquarters – including the design team, which had previously been based in Madrid – has been located on Place Saint-Sulpice in Paris.[18] The company remains based in Spain. Manufacture, particularly of leather goods, takes place in Barcelona and Getafe, near Madrid.[19]
Following high-profile collaborations, including designing several custom performance looks for American singer Beyoncé's Renaissance World Tour and appointing South Korean rapper Taeyong as a brand ambassador, Loewe topped the Lyst's Hottest Brand Index for the first time in the second quarter of 2023,[21] a position previously held by Prada.[22]
Loewe stores are located worldwide. In 2014, Loewe's 143 stores were concentrated mainly in Spain and Japan, which respectively had 37 and 27 locations.[23] The first London shop opened in 1963,[9] on Mayfair's Mount Street.[24]
Loewe opened its first American store in New York, a three-story shop at the Trump Tower,[25] in 1983;[26] it closed 1993.[10] Today, the company has four stores in the US, located in Miami's Design District (since 2016),[15][27] at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas (since 2018), in New York (since 2019)[28] and on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles (since 2022).[29]
In 2016, Loewe opened Casa Loewe Madrid, the brand's first flagship in Madrid and – with 10,750 square feet (999 square metres) – its largest store in the world. It is located in the ground floor of the company's head office in a landmark 19th-century building.[30] In 2019, Loewe outgrew its London store in Mount Street and opened Casa Loewe at 41-42 New Bond Street.[31]
In 1988, Enrique Loewe y Lynch, great-grandchild of the firm's creator, founded the Loewe Foundation, a private cultural foundation that supports cultural events and exhibitions.[32] Today, his daughter Sheila Loewe is the President of the foundation supporting design and craftsmanship.[33] The foundation received a gold medal for Merit in the Fine Arts from the Spanish government in 2002.[34] Following an initiative of designer Jonathan Anderson, the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize was established in 2017.[35]
In 2019 lawsuit brought to the Tribunal de commerce de Paris, Loewe invoked a non-compete case related to its employment of designer Bruno Sialelli who left early to as artistic director at Lanvin at a time when he was still bound by commitments linked to his prior position.[55] As part of an out-of-court settlement in 2020, Loewe and Lanvin reached an agreement.[56]
until 2014
2014 onwards
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