Written By | Fashion Experts
A limited anniversary capsule threads lion motifs — Loewe's heraldic emblem — through beaded embroidery, leather intarsia, and dangling charms
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MADRID
Fashion houses love an anniversary, but few have one like this. Loewe — the Madrid leather atelier turned global luxury powerhouse — is celebrating 180 years with one of the most quietly star-studded campaigns of the year: an octogenarian Oscar winner, a K-pop idol, a Hong Kong action legend, and one of America's most important living artists, all clutching the bags that built the house.
Shot by Talia Chetrit, the campaign stars Julia Garner, Salma Abu Deif, aespa's Giselle, Kara Wai, Sissy Spacek, and artist Kara Walker. The casting is the message: craft, Loewe argues, belongs to everyone who has ever made anything with their hands.
Three Bags, Three Eras
The real protagonists are the bags: the 1980s Flamenco clutch, the geometric 2015 Puzzle, and at the center, the Amazona 180 — a birthday reinterpretation of the 1970s satchel that once swung from Kate Moss's arm (and Blair Waldorf's).
The new Amazona comes from Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez — the Proenza Schouler founders who took Loewe's creative reins last year. Their version keeps the original's "confidence and independence" but loosens it: softer proportions, suppler leather, renewed ease. Their full runway debut lands in September. This capsule is the amuse-bouche.
A Lion, Embroidered
A limited anniversary capsule threads lion motifs — Loewe's heraldic emblem — through beaded embroidery, leather intarsia, and dangling charms. Leather treated not as material but as language.
Chetrit's unvarnished portraiture puts the grain of the leather and the lines of the faces on equal footing. No palaces. No golden hour. The luxury is in the making: the hours of hand-stitching in the Madrid workshop.
There's also a film, narrated by Antonio Banderas, walking through Loewe's improbable history: the German merchant who gave the enterprise his name in 1872, the royal warrant of 1905, and the Loewe Foundation (1988), which funds one of the world's most prestigious craft prizes.
Why This Anniversary Matters
Luxury anniversaries are usually self-congratulation. This one is a handover document. Loewe spent the past decade being transformed by Jonathan Anderson into fashion's critical darling — pixelated dresses, balloon heels, genuine strangeness — before Anderson decamped to Dior.
McCollough and Hernandez's first extended public answer is shrewd: rather than chasing their predecessor's surrealism, they are anchoring themselves in what predates every creative director — the leather, the workshop, the 180 years.
With luxury spending cooling globally, heritage is the sector's most valuable currency. A 180-year-old atelier with a buzzy new design team and a revived archive bag is, in 2026, just about the strongest hand a brand can hold.
What This Means for You
The capsule rolls out this month. The Amazona 180 is the piece most likely to graduate from anniversary novelty to long-term classic. Vintage-minded buyers: original 1970s and 2000s Amazonas are already climbing on collector platforms.
And for everyone else, the campaign is simply worth a look — for Sissy Spacek, 76 and luminous, holding a handbag like a secret; for Kara Walker, an artist who interrogates history, fronting a house celebrating its own.
At 180, Loewe has pulled off the rarest trick in fashion: looking backward and forward in the same photograph, and making both directions look like the future.
