What mountain must Loewe's FW26 climb? The second collection from the creative duo McCollough/Hernandez leaves several doubts

You know when a creative director leaves a Maison and, before a successor is announced, there’s that delicate limbo of design studio collections, which often end up being a mishmash of safe codes on which the brand builds its foundations, accompanied by dissonant wild cards that fail to make the collection particularly noteworthy? Well, that was the first impression of Loewe’s FW26, with the small detail that it wasn’t designed by the in-house studio but represents the second collection by Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez.

The imagery the collection plunges us into is that of a new gorp-core, with technical outerwear, wraparound sunglasses, pumps mimicking the shape of bouldering shoes, and tight hoods paired with long, voluminous fur coats, tartan mini dresses and fluorescent leggings. The pressed leather treatments, surreal volumes and soft shapes were all there, yet executed in a rather mediocre way.

Because throughout the entire show there wasn’t a disruptive moment in the Loewe sense (except for a few pillow-shaped scarves), neither in the collection nor in the accessories: everything was, more or less, okay. No tomato, no rose, no pigeon, just a string of anonymous bags that were still beautiful nonetheless. A sense of continuity, perhaps too heavy-handed, with their debut collection. The same color-blocking, the same play with collars half left out, the same pattern cuts for the draped dresses, the same layering for the hoods. A signature is one thing, but here we could almost call it laziness.

Inside the venue, meanwhile, there was a series of soft sculptures depicting marine animals, made as giant plush toys in dark velvet. A reclining seal, a lobster with elongated claws, an orca rising up, and even a stylized dog with pointed ears, all carrying that tactile, almost childlike quality that in recent years has become one of the most recognizable features of Loewe’s imagery. 

That same spirit was already present in the invitation, a leather lobster claw that could be inflated. A deliberately playful object that seemed to suggest a marine universe, almost cartoonish. The soundtrack followed that same direction too. During the show you could hear natural sounds, birds chirping and ambient noises, closer to a mountain landscape or a forest than to a Paris runway. Everything seemed to be building a naturalistic imagination, almost naïve, where fauna and landscape became an integral part of the narrative. The problem is that this imagery never really made it onto the runway.

The result is a fairly evident dissonance between concept and execution. And this is precisely where the biggest question about Loewe’s new direction begins to emerge. Over the past few years, the brand had become a laboratory of unpredictable ideas, capable of turning every season into a small cultural moment. FW26, on the other hand, seems more interested in consolidating a grammar than in inventing a new one: it isn’t a wrong collection, but it is one that leaves the impression of not having dared enough. A climb that, in the end, offered no breathtaking view.