Loewe: 180 years of leather, and a new chapter

Loewe is 180 years old this year, which makes it older than almost everything else on our rail and older than most of the countries that buy it. It was founded in Madrid in 1846, and it has been a leather house from the beginning.

Madrid, and a name that stuck

The workshop existed before the name did. It became Loewe when Enrique Loewe Roessberg, a German leatherworker, joined the Madrid craftsmen already working there. What he built was a house with an unusual relationship to its own material: leather treated as something to be made soft, folded and worked rather than made rigid and structural.

Ready-to-wear arrived in 1965. The 1960s and 70s brought the geometric accessories that established Loewe's visual identity. LVMH acquired the house in 1996, and it showed in Paris for the first time the following year.

The Anderson era

Jonathan Anderson took over as creative director in 2013 and stayed until 2025. It is not an exaggeration to say he rebuilt what Loewe meant. He took a house known for good leather goods and gifts and turned it into a cultural argument about craft — the Puzzle bag, the Hammock, the annual craft prize, collaborations that went to Studio Ghibli rather than to another streetwear label, campaigns that were funny on purpose.

By the end of his tenure the house was operating at a scale several times what it had been. More importantly, it had become a place people looked to for ideas rather than for status.

What happens now

Anderson left in March 2025. Within a week Loewe named Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez — the founders of Proenza Schouler — as creative directors, starting that April. Their first collection, spring/summer 2026, showed in October 2025, and their first campaign for the house arrived in early 2026, described in their own words as confident, playful and sun-drenched.

It is early. What is already visible is a New York directness laid over Spanish craft, which is a different proposition from Anderson's surrealism but not a rejection of it. This is genuinely one of the more interesting transitions in the industry right now, and it is happening in real time.

What we carry

Our Loewe selection sits mostly in leather goods and accessories — messenger bags, totes, small leather goods, phone cases and keychains — alongside knitwear and pieces where the material work is the point. Knotting, dimensional patchwork, cutouts: details that only make sense as leather.

The house also makes some of the best blankets and mohair knits in luxury, which is not what most people come to Loewe for and is worth knowing.

Buying it

Loewe leather is soft by design. That means it marks, and the marks become part of the object rather than damage to it. If you want a bag that stays pristine, buy a different house.

Small leather goods are the sensible entry point and hold value well. The craft is identical to the larger pieces; only the scale changes.

Knitwear runs closer to true size than the ready-to-wear, which carries more volume.

See Loewe at ANSH46, or browse all bags and accessories.

We are a Loewe stockist in Rotterdam and ship across Europe.