Jonathan Anderson inspired by Cristiano Ronaldo for his new collection

We know very well how Cristiano Ronaldo is something more than a simple footballer, indeed, something more than a simple champion. In fact, the Portuguese has transformed his long and successful career into a monument to himself, a celebration of the will to power such as to bend the world to his percentage of lean mass and that over the years has become forced, caricatured so as to no longer be an inspiration as much as a meme. However, he doesn't think so, or perhaps this is the aspect that most struck designer Jonathan Anderson, founder of JW Anderson and creative director of LOEWE. 

In an interview with Vogue in conjunction with the presentation show for the men's collection for fall 2022, unfortunately held in a London club instead of as planned during the Milan Fashion Week due to Omicron wave restrictions, Anderson recounted how he spent the last lockdown watching documentaries about every kind of topic possible ending up obsessing over one about Cristiano Ronaldo. "I was seeing a person who was so obsessed with their goal that they almost became a caricature. And I found it particularly motivating as a person," admits the designer. 

Maybe it's true that extremes attract, since there are few designers in the current panorama who have investigated and challenged traditional masculinity with provocative and revolutionary operations as much as Jonathan Anderson. We are talking about a designer who, in the collection from which the interview was inspired, presented a bag in the shape of a pigeon, or a pigeon in the shape of a bag, depending on your point of view. And who a few paragraphs earlier explained how he considers his works "silly", a word he defines as very British, that is playful but at the same time able to overturn the stereotypes with which they are confronted. 

And Cristiano Ronaldo is a perfect stereotype for a masculinity exhibited so unfiltered that it becomes, as Anderson says, fully camp. A spectacle so perfect in its pulled muscles, charged expressions and insatiable hunger for glory that it would work even without the ball, or players around it. "I was thinking that if you take away the ball, take away the rest of the team and only this footballer is left, there's something a bit reminiscent of Strictly Come Dancing (a BBC dance show)." It would be nice to hear CR7's answer to this.