Paris Fashion Week show review: Can Jonathan 'JW' Anderson crack the code for Loewe?

A model presents a design at the Loewe show

Fashion is obsessed with codes. By codes they of course mean the emblematic elements that make up a label's identity - and that you can spin out not only on expensive clothes and handbags but on lightweight stuff like lipsticks and leather pouches. The stuff everyone else does too. codes brand your identity into those products, and add a zero to the price-tags.

So, often those codes are what young designers (young in terms of tenure at houses, rather than necessarily physical age) are eager to define, and offer their own spin. Look at Jonathan “JW” Anderson, who took his first bow at the Spanish leathergoods house Loewe on Friday morning. Anderson's challenge is twofold: not only to place his mark on Loewe's aesthetic, but to actually assert what the label stands for. It's identity has been hazy at best, and restricted to its trademark gold-hued suede Amazona handbags.

Anderson decided to start with those: witness his opening look, a scrappy dress made from chewed-up hunks of suede that looked a bit like he'd detonated a Loewe bag and sewn the bits together again. Other garments were made from rayon bag lining, lassoed with great drawstrings around the waist and sleeves and yanked tight. Bag ladies, in every sense of the word, given the overall impression of expensive impoverishment evoked by all those artfully frayed and tattered edges.

Conceptually, Anderson asserted it was about the importance of the “hand” in Loewe clothes. He meant the Loewe craftspeople, but you also thought of his hand as a designer pulling it all together. The trouble with conceptual clothing is that, all too often, it stalls at the drawing board and never really translates into the garments.

After a London collection that drew on polished French finishing - and served a lot of real, honest-to-goodness chic clothing - for his own label, Loewe was Anderson at his most obtuse and cerebral. It's his debut on a Paris catwalk (his menswear, shown in June, was presented informally in the new Loewe showroom on the left bank). Perhaps he felt that additional pressure to perform. Hence he put on a show, rather than showing some clothes.

That's not entirely true. There was a clutch of skinny sweaters with bright colour patched onto the left shoulder, in the contrast of iffy shades that's one of Anderson's trademarks; a pair of trenches in the slick Loewe suede; a few pairs of straightforward, straight up and down leather trousers. That's your lot.

It was a promising debut, though. Anderson has a vision, undoubtedly. That menswear proved it, as does his ripping and reshaping of Loewe's retail hoardings around the globe. The concept's down pat. But overall the take-away - as in, the stuff you actually wanted to take away and wear - was restricted to the accessories, to knobbly-heeled shoes, knotted little purses, hand-woven hold-alls or tattered totes with polished brass handles. Those were a perfect fusion of raw and refined. Hopefully, they're a portent of more to come.