Designer Jonthan Anderson and photographer David Sims express a new visual paradigm where freedom is the ultimate experience of life.
By LAURA BOLT
Photography DAVID SIMS
For a man who once said, “I'm not here to please an industry, I'm here to challenge it," Jonathan Anderson has certainly succeeded at defying expectations. Through his own eponymous line and at the helm of Loewe, the Creative Director has found himself part of the constellation of young designers who are reinventing and redefining the industry with fresh takes on form, gender, luxury, and the future.
Anderson, who originally hails from Northern Ireland, has spoken of his work as such: “When I first joined Loewe I went to the Prado, and I walked down this incredibly long corridor of some of the greatest works in history from the Royal collection. There was a Reubens and a Titian, side by side, both of Adam and Eve. They looked identical. But they were by Reubens and Titian. I went through a phase where I didn’t believe that fashion was art, but I do believe that it is a reflection of society, so, therefore it is an art form. It is an interpretation, and it is fine to reinvent. If Reubens can reinvent Titian, then this is fine. For me, that’s the history of the universe there, because ultimately it is about the passing of information.”
Almost two decades older than Anderson, British photographer David Sims is an indelible and undeniable part of the art world, pushing the boundaries of what fashion photography can be. His contributions to publications like The Face and i-D have helped create the aesthetic foundation of British style in the 1990s, and he has also helped push the limits of what brands like Prada, Givenchy, and Valentino could be presented as.
“Most of what inspires what I do is a sort of misremembered event in my life,” he has said of his style. “I’m good at writing myth around myself and I might think of myself as having more emotion at one time, so I tap into some of what the echo of that is.”
In a joint project where Sims photographed Anderson’s work for Loewe in a special edition book, the world has the opportunity to see what happens when two powerful forces collide. The duo found a fortuitous time to collaborate, with the world experiencing unprecedented tumult on a multitude of fronts. Sims’ photographs unapologetically harken back to a time of freedom, release, and hedonism. Inspired by rave culture, Sim’s work with Loewe is insouciant, unexpected, youthful, and ultimately, imbued with a sense of hope and joy that can be hard to come by in both the fashion industry, and in the world at large.
It should perhaps come as no surprise that Sims looked to the rave scene to provide the inspirational underpinnings of his latest work. While fashion and music have always been familiar bedfellows, Sims’ approach to – and participation in – subcultures has become a defining characteristic of his work. Coming to prominence in London during the early 90’s, Sims had a front row seat to the influence of glam, punk, shoegaze, and brit pop – as well as their respective fashions. “It seemed to present something which was more descriptive of a feeling or an emotion or a narrative. The big shift was the subject matter and how that changed the traditional outline of beauty. People want to get back to that,” he has said. “It’s a slightly fascistic thing that was all about presenting power and sex, whereas the grunge image is all about feeling and melancholy. They’re two opposite schools of thought. I think the younger generation want to go back to the latter.”
The music scene provides its own pulse to the work, a sensation that clothes haven’t just been designed, but are being animated and lived in, adding color, shape, and movement set to a syncopated beat. Speaking of his previous work, Sims has said, “We’ve made this journey without ever having left the room. Because the options are limitless, the technique becomes less important. The idea itself is the singular exponent.”
This moment has provided unique ways to interpret a designer’s vision and restructure reality, not just in their creations, but in the ways in which they bring them to fruition. In a time marked by restrictions and constraint, Anderson surprisingly found a sense of freedom in his – and society’s – newfound limitations, reflecting that “limitations can actually be really freeing.” One is reminded of the combination of freedom and constriction experienced during a vivid dream, a dream in which you might be speaking a language you don’t understand, limbs heavy and out of your command, but immersed in a landscape you never thought possible. “Nocturnal is a great word,” Anderson has said when discussing his aesthetic. “This is where we are able to see people when they are free. It’s not a work environment, it’s where you express yourself, where you let go.”
In this dreamscape that Anderson and Sims have created, there is a sense of intimacy and the particular kind of self-expression that feels endemic to a time in one’s life when there is nothing but the future ahead of you. While the idea of luxury generally conjures up images of sumptuous fabrics, rare stones, and detailed craftsmanship, it seems that for Anderson and Sims, it is freedom itself that is the ultimate luxury.
“I find romance in humdrum places,” Sims has said. “I’ve striven to create romantic images, to describe things “romantically.”
To view Sims’ photographs of Anderson’s work is to peer into a world that seems both ecstatic and fleeting, secret, but inviting. It is impossible to deny a certain precocious romance in the unfinished basements, trespassed chain link fences, and crowded bedrooms of the photos. The characters are both inspirational and aspirational, with Sims’ touch presenting them more as memories of friends than models. This approach seems to be an ideal match for Anderson’s design ethos, of which he has said, “I have always approached clothing with this idea that it’s not about genderless clothing and it’s not about sexuality, but it’s just about the individual somehow, almost like you are proposing an individual who has no sort of like place in time,” he explains. “I like building a series of looks because they become different animations of that one character’s attitude. It sort of opens this door where you have to pose something for someone to react against or for yourself to react against. I think for me, it is about the empowerment of a silhouette, which ultimately becomes the intrigue.”
One of the gifts that Anderson and Sims’ collaboration offers the viewer is the chance not to simply admire their art, but to be invited into that world of intrigue, to imbue it with your own experiences, hopes, fears, and secrets. “Life is a spoken mirror and we’re now in a moment where the mirror is incredibly muddied,” Anderson has said. There have been times when the role of art was to hold up that mirror and reflect truth, but these days, it seems more apropos to hold up a mirror in which we can take ourselves through the looking glass into a place that feels altogether new.
“We’re at this very strange moment where it is the beginning of a chapter and I don’t know where we’re going ultimately, which is kind of exciting,” said Anderson. It seems that there has never been a time where our sense of the future seems murkier, but instead of approaching that uncertainty with fear, spending time in the world that Anderson and Sims have created is nudging us to see the potential in that – potential for desire, for change, for beauty, and hopefully, for growth. Ultimately, a world we don’t recognize doesn’t have to be one that doesn’t feel like home.
It is perhaps due to a shared relationship to their work that Sims and Anderson have been able to create a collaboration that feels vivid, of-the-moment, and so satisfyingly able to be imbued with our own desires and memories. “I don’t go out to say that I started something and I own it; I just work with things, Anderson said several years ago. “I think this idea of ownership of design is just ridiculous. I don’t own anything. I make it, I put it out there. That’s it. I move on.” Sims would appear to agree. “You present and re-present your pictures and they gain new significance,” he said. “Just to see it again is a pleasure, but you can’t hold on to it. I let go all the time.” Conspiring, creating, letting go – now there’s a dream we can all share.