The Creative Playbook for Fashion Brands (Loewe Case Study)

In this video, we are going to go through the art direction of Loewe, one of the funnest, most interesting brands of probably this last decade.

They are the epitome of Spanish luxury. They not only make true luxury heritage items, but they also cross over and crush it on new channels like TikTok.

And this is the perfect time to do this video because their creative director, Jonathan Anderson, has just left for Dior.

So I want to take some time and appreciate that era.

I had a blast pulling all of this together and really taking an in-depth look at the Art Direction the brand has done in their campaigns, in their presentation, and on their social media.

So we're going to break it down for you as a toolkit of what this means for brands, what this means for you as a creative, and what you can learn from them about your own creative work.

We're going to talk through recurring ideas and the motifs they use in a lot of their campaigns.

We're going to talk through the foundations of Art Direction for a luxury house like this, and what do they actually build their world around.

Editorials, still life, behind the scenes, sets, even events and showcases.

And we're going to talk about concepts and the visual concepts that really help define their brand and make all these mismatch of things feel distinctly Loewe.

And then I'm actually going to walk through their social media, their TikTok in particular, and just break down some of the content and tactics that have been so effective for them to stand out in the new world.

I am super excited for this one. This is by far the funnest of the R Direction videos that I've done after Stussy and Rick and all these others.

Excited for y'all to come on the ride. Let's lock in. I want to take a look at what Loewe looked like a decade ago.

So if we look at their 2013 ad campaign, it has Penelope Cruz in it. They're showcasing the Amazon bag.

But literally the call out for this campaign is that they used a wide angle lens for it.

That's how far the creative and campaigns have come from this era and this look and feel to the fun and playfulness of the full realization of the Jonathan Anderson era.

And one thing I love and appreciate about brands like this is they've actually published so much of their work over time.

So in 2017, they published two books just on their past, present, and future, showcasing their campaigns, their creative process, what they're thinking, presenting their images, and what they do as art.

And this documentation is something I feel is important and everyone should think about as their brand and their creative.

If you are making amazing, interesting art, then actually showing that and displaying it as such and releasing it as such, documenting it is a big part of that process.

I ordered something from House of Errors the other week and I got like a book about House of Errors in the box.

They're actually making sure that people know the work that they're putting into their creative and they're publishing it in that way.

Let's start off by talking about the recurring motifs. So every brand visually, when you're making campaigns, it's good to have a visual toolkit that you can refer back to time and time again that has recurring things that come up inside the imagery.

So for Loewe, this is placement within nature. You will see that so little of their campaigns happen in anything modern. It happens a lot outside.

You see greenery. You see the landscape. you see people participating in something in the world, rarely indoors.

And this might seem subtle, but it's an important part of the brand. It would be completely different than if you always saw someone in an environment, or if they're always in a brutalist postmodern environment,

always near buildings, always with technology. That choice to embrace nature is a visual choice that, when it's a through line over enough time, really begins to define a brand.

And the second one, and perhaps what they are most known for to casual observers in today's era, is the use of fruit and vegetables within their campaigns, mostly fruit.

I will argue over whether tomato is a fruit in a separate video.

It does have seeds, but they are leaning into this in the form of their products and in the direction of everything around them.

From the packaging, this iconic Loewe tomato that you'll now see is on their bags, is in their website, is on their social media.

They're turning big balloons and turkey into this. They are taking this idea, this real world natural item of fruit and applying it across the expanse of what they do.

And I feel like identifying those objects that can stand for your brand is really interesting and important.

And so they've taken motifs like this and they've applied it to still life. We'll talk about this in the foundation section of this video in a second.

But they do lots of campaigns that basically just feature their products intermixed with fruit. But then they've also taken that into editorial.

So in this campaign I'm showing right here, one of their more kind of prolific ones, there's no product shown inside these.

It is purely the models of this campaign, this Loewe kind of look with fruit in their mouths.

And that is representative of the campaign and collection that they were doing for the time without any product shown.

And with that, with this still life, comes this idea of product as sculpture.

That when they're presenting it, you're presenting as if you present an art object, as if it is something that is about to be painted.

This is an art direction choice that they're choosing in terms of how they show their product when they do show it.

And you will rarely see anything that comes from the brand that is

presented in any kind of normal light angle or circumstance is

always presented as if it is a solo art object or as it

fit as a still life in context of art being documented

or created and so of those three the nature the fruit

the product of sculpture the first three pillars the next two are

a bit of a departure next one is craft and something this is every luxury brand

should have but this dedication to what makes this product unique why