Advertisement

JW Anderson: 'Lockdown forced us to break an entire cycle that we were getting a bit lost in'

1 Moncler JW Anderson -  
1 Moncler JW Anderson -

In February, Moncler CEO Remo Ruffini kicked off Milan Fashion Week with an event that bore more resemblance to a new Disneyworld ride than a typical catwalk show. Held in a cavernous former factory building, it was a multi-platform sensory explosion, all in the name of presenting new collections for the Moncler Genius concept.

There were puppies (for a dogwear range)! There were Storm Trooper-esque mountain climbers walking sideways along what looked like an ice wall (for Moncler Grenoble)! There was Will Smith! There was even a Rick Owens tour bus, with ample tequila to slake the thirst of the hundreds of guests waiting to board and gawk at its puffa-walled interior.

Of course there were fashion collections, too - eight of them - including 1MONCLER JW ANDERSON. For his first Genius collection, London-based designer Jonathan Anderson revisited favourite designs from his own brand in an “inflated archive”. He showed it in the round, in a low-lit space dominated by wacky waving inflatable tube men. It was silly but also disquieting, and made a foreboding landscape for models to traverse in their spiky puffa scarves, patch-pocketed jumpers and pillowy handbags.

A look from 1 Moncler JW Anderson shown at Milan Fashion Week in February 2020 - Marcus Tondo
A look from 1 Moncler JW Anderson shown at Milan Fashion Week in February 2020 - Marcus Tondo

That was then. This time around, Anderson did not go to Milan after showing his latest collection for JW Anderson in London; in fact, he didn’t show the collection in any traditional sense at all (he shared a video). Like everyone else in the world, Anderson’s past six months have seen him live and work at a dramatically slower pace.

“It was an interesting experiment,” he said of lockdown through a video-call window earlier this month. “It forced you to break an entire cycle that we were getting a bit lost in. Sometimes you need things to be really bad to realise what you had was good.”

Instead of toggling between his own brand and Loewe, as well as collaborations with Moncler and Uniqlo, he remained in London for the early part of lockdown and then hunkered down at his country house in Norfolk. He cleaned, shopped for ceramics (he’s particularly excited about a new Shawanda Corbett pot) and grasped the opportunity to pause and reconsider - well, everything.

Anderson -  
Anderson -

“I had been questioning a lot of things at my own brand, like the speed at which we had been growing,” he said. “I realise now that we were growing in the right way…. You have to build solid things that have meaning. We have to leave old ways of thinking behind. The next generation needs to come off the plate. People are bored with formulas, people are bored of seeing the same kind of cycle. Now is a really good moment for brands to do what they want to do, and not be dictated by a system.”

Anderson responded with some of the more ingenious and effective show proxies we’ve seen so far. He presented Loewe’s last collection as a show in a box; during London Fashion Week, he produced a lighthearted video of The Crown star Emma Corrin trying on clothes in his JW Anderson flagship store. He can’t see himself returning to the traditional show format anytime soon. “I don’t want to show clothing to an empty audience and film it. It’s a very strange, paradoxical thing to do, and incredibly arrogant….

“There are moments when fashion can be a little quieter and a bit more responsible and responsive to the current mood.”

A mood for which his Genius collection seems almost eerily well-suited. With its mallard-print parkas, polka-dot puffas and military-inflected knitwear, the collection has a surreal scout-troop feel - clothes a luxury client might snap up for her next camping trip.

More looks from Anderson's Moncler collection -  
More looks from Anderson's Moncler collection -

“I extracted the pieces that I really, really always wanted to do properly, and sometimes never had the money or facilities to do. So for me, it was this utopian project” to realise designs that until now had existed perfectly only in his mind.

There were technical challenges - spikes that were “very complex to do pattern-wise” and “leather that looked molten or liquid, like nylon” for the handbags - but “in the end, the result was fantastic.”

Anderson has worn one of his dotted puffas for walks in Norfolk and London. For a designer who remembers coveting a Moncler jacket when he was a student at London College of Fashion, it’s a full-circle moment. “For me it’s the best puffa that there is. It’s almost a classic piece,” he says. “What I like about it is that it’s incredibly lightweight. It’s something you can dress up or dress down, which is really important now. We need to have so much versatility; nothing can be for just one occasion.”

For more news, analysis and advice from The Telegraph's fashion desk, click here to sign up to get our weekly newsletter, straight to your inbox every Friday. Follow our Instagram @Telegraphfashion