In defiance of the current offerings in fashion that, like sushi, seem to only come in two varieties—either very expensive or very cheap—the designer has become known for creating well-made pieces with an everyday ease and prices that are not quite so eye-popping as those of most luxury brands. It’s not so far-fetched, then, that he found a natural partner in Uniqlo in 2017. Anderson says he admires Tadashi Yanai, president of Fast Retailing, the parent company of Uniqlo, for his meticulousness and determined vision of balancing quality and affordability. He lauds Yanai as “one of the most inspiring people I’ve met in this industry”.

From The Mundane To The Fantastic

“I loved that I was able to make something my sister, who’s a pharmacist, can afford, because not everyone can spend 1,000 euros on a bag,” says Anderson, who alternates between black, white and grey Uniqlo T-shirts and plain jeans as his daily uniform.

“As a boy, and this was before Uniqlo existed, I bought all my clothes at Marks & Spencer,” he laughs, his Northern Irish twang flitting in and out of his speech. “I’m not very good at dressing up. When I do, I look silly.” Quite the contrast to the statement pieces which comprise most of his collections, I point out. “I think if I were statement, it’d be very difficult to produce statement,” he says. “I think you need to have a certain neutrality to explore fantasy, you know what I mean?”

Humble Beginnings

Anderson grew up in Magherafelt, Northern Ireland and was raised by his mother, who was a schoolteacher, and father, who was the captain of the Irish rugby team, amid a dark period of chaos and car bombings in the Eighties and Nineties. U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday might as well have been the soundtrack of his youth, so Anderson had to rely on escapism to buoy him through this sombre childhood, an element that continues to be found throughout his work today (Loewe’s hedonistic, tie-dye-splattered Paula’s Ibiza capsules, inspired by memories from his family’s vacations, are case in point).

He was diagnosed with dyslexia at an early age, which in hindsight may have encouraged him to pursue other forms of expression like acting, which he studied, at one point moving to Washington DC to train at the city’s Studio Theatre. He was entranced by the sets and the romanticism that Shakespeare offered (“He’s Britain’s best asset”), and it was the costumes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream that eventually won him over to the side of fashion.

After studying menswear at the London College of Fashion, he was discovered by Miuccia Prada’s right hand and fashion coordinator, the late stylist Manuela Pavesi, to become a visual merchandiser for the Italian house for two years. Did he ever think of joining the brand? “I struggled with authority,” he says, his tone belying the cheeky smile of someone whose rebellion has paid off. “That’s the reason I started my own brand: because I realised I couldn’t work for someone else.”

See also: A Fashion Revolution In The Midst: How Coronavirus Has Impacted Sustainability In Design

Pushing The Envelope

JW Anderson—which began as a gender-skewing menswear label in 2008 and later expanded into womenswear, becoming the most popular show of London Fashion Week—is characterised by the designer as a “cultural agitator”. Casually decorative pieces like spangled puffball dresses and giant trapeze-shaped trenches are mixed with idiosyncratic elements or tinged with irony. Remember the slime-green snails painted on jackets in his fall-winter 2016 menswear collection? Well, it was a comment on the breakneck speed at which our world operates. “I like toying with the idea of function and decoration, and flipping them around,” he says.

His studied approach is also what keeps even his most experimental products from verging on gimmickry. His in-demand Cap Bag, a cap-shaped cross-body bag shaped like a baseball cap and made at a Spanish factory with hand-finished details, is a prime example. “It very much follows Marcel Duchamps’ principles of contemporary art—taking something that already exists and giving it a different purpose, or no purpose at all.”

Anderson’s finesse and depth of knowledge under his renegade take on fashion caught the eyes of LVMH executives Delphine Arnault and Pierre-Yves Roussel, the conglomerate’s ex-fashion chief, in charge of scouting for new talent the time, who bought a stake in JW in 2013 and simultaneously invited him to revive the sleepy 1846 Spanish leather goods house Loewe as its new creative director. (A number of designers had tried before, including Narciso Rodriguez, Stuart Vevers, now of Coach, and José Enrique Oña Selfa, with less success.) 

A tour of Loewe’s factories in Madrid, where Anderson saw the skill of its leather workers and a profusion of resources, convinced him to take the job. There, Anderson created what he calls “a cultural landscape”. Compared to his younger label, Loewe is a bucolic vista of elegant silhouettes, easy yet exaggerated swathes of knits, asymmetric Victorian lace dresses and occasionally raw, unpolished hemlines. He made it his mission to highlight traditional handicrafts in high fashion, and his determination paid off—Loewe sales have seen consistent double-digit growth since Anderson took the reins.

Team Player

Altogether, Anderson churns out an astonishing 18 collections per year, making him one of the most prolific designers in the business. He credits his own naivety for bolstering him against the fear of becoming overwhelmed, but he also stresses that his two strong, loyal teams have helped him maintain balance. Dedicating three days a week to JW and two to Loewe, he has separate staffs and phones to keep his focus straight. “You cannot win a match with one player,” he says. “I think I definitely got that from my dad, this idea of teamwork and elevating those around you.”

Perhaps one of his most endearing qualities is Anderson’s adamant refusal to hog all the credit. A self-named curator, as opposed to a traditional designer “like Azzedine Alaïa, who could cut the perfect dress”, Anderson is a prism through which all the references he collects are refracted and spun into garments. His impactful fashion shows are akin to an exhibition by an avid scrapbooker.

“My brain doesn’t function like Alaïa’s. It’s always been about getting the best craftspeople who have a similar taste level into a room and just putting things together that are my vision of what the world should look like,” he says. Open, proud and reverent of all his sources, from potters to musicians, he bristles at the current culture’s obsessions with ownership, preferring his work to have a life outside his mind and become public domain. “You cannot take ownership of things, but you can recreate known subjects in your own point of view. It’s like the passing on of information.” Don’t be surprised, then, if you hear a rustle of leaves in the soundtrack of his next show.

I ask if he feels like he’s on a roll, that everything he touches seems to turn to gold lately (this autumn sees the launch of yet another collaboration, this time with Moncler) but Anderson laughs, as if it’s too early to count his successes. “The thing about fashion or film or music is there is a window in which people will give you their attention, and I feel like the minute I know where I’m at, I’ll find it difficult to go forward,” he says. “You can never be too comfortable. It has to be about what’s next, you know what I mean?”

Tatler Philippines July 2020 issue is available now on Zinio, Pressreader, and Magzter