The crowds were out in full force last night in Soho. The central London neighbourhood, with its narrow streets and neon-lit gay bars, has long been a melting pot of out-of-towners, nocturnal partygoers, and the colourful cast of local celebrities (varying from Hare Krishnas to legendary drag queens).
It’s also the neighbourhood where Jonathan Anderson, too, would spend his Saturday nights as a young fashion student and almost two decades later, opened his flagship JW Anderson store, which is nestled amid arcades, dodgy massage parlours and queer watering holes. Amid the chaos of rickshaws and bar dwellers, Jonathan staged his SS23 show for his namesake brand in the Las Vegas arcade, a 24-hour spot lined with slot machines and candy-coloured gaming consoles.
You could say that Jonathan is a gambling man. Over the years, in both his own label and in his creative director role at Loewe, he has taken risks with experimental collections that sometimes veer towards conceptual art, rather than straightforward commercial clothes. One of the most striking looks in the collection he presented last night was a bauble of a dress, entirely mirrored, that distortedly reflected the myriad neon lights, faces of the audience, and flash of iPhones that it sailed past on the catwalk. It touched on some of the themes of hyper-realism and technology that Jonathan introduced in his last menswear collection for Loewe. After the show, he asked some of the same questions: “Are we falling into the screen? Are we becoming our phones? Is it to do with where we are in society? I liked this idea that the taking of the picture is sometimes nearly more important than the picture itself.”
Whereas his last Loewe collection was resolutely hi-fi, with HD screens becoming garments, projecting images of nature in the way that we all post sunsets and landscapes on social media. This time, Jonathan took it to a more old-school idea of technology. Bulky keyboard buttons, the kind found on PCs rather than slick Macbooks, became embellishments on long jersey dresses, even a knobbly-textured halterneck top. A dress made to look like a plastic bag containing a goldfish iterated the sense of surrealism that Jonathan has been toying with for the last few seasons. Prints of images on bodysuits and — amber sunsets, globes, palm tree-lined beaches — were borrowed from the stock of imagery on Getty Images.
“I like this idea of a transient moment in time. I’ve been exploring this for several collections,” he explained after the show. “I think it’s really like an alternate universe, and there are layers and layers and layers to it. I think it’s probably about realism. I don’t think it’s about futurism. It’s more about a reflection of ourselves somehow.”
To finish, Jonathan — ever the contrarian — showed a black T-shirt with a simple tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II. Last week, on an emergency British Fashion Council conference call in the aftermath of the monarch’s death, he was a vocal ringleader who rallied London’s community of designers to carry on with London Fashion Week for the sake of independent brands who couldn’t afford to cancel. Given that he’s Northern Irish, you couldn’t help wonder if the tribute was ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek. That’s the thing about Jonathan’s particular brand of surreal, trippy fashion — you can make of it what you will, it’s here to delight and entertain.
Follow i-D on Instagram and TikTok for more on fashion.
Credits
Images via Spotlight