Loewe

Loewe traces its origins to 1846, when a group of leather artisans set up a workshop in Madrid's old town. In 1872 Enrique Loewe Roessberg, a merchant and craftsman from Hesse in Germany, joined them and gave the business his name. His son, Enrique Loewe Hinton, opened shops in Madrid and Barcelona, and in 1905 King Alfonso XIII named the company Purveyor to the Royal Court, a title it still holds.

Through the twentieth century Loewe became Spain's pre-eminent leather goods house, prized for fine napa and supple, hand-finished bags. The designer José Pérez de Rozas shaped its look from the late 1930s, and in 1970 the Spanish painter Vicente Vela designed the Anagram, four interlocking Ls inspired by the house's history and still embossed on its leather. In 1975 Loewe introduced the Amazona, a soft, practical bag for women who drove and worked, which became one of its enduring classics. Fragrance, ready-to-wear and international boutiques followed, and the Loewe Foundation was established in 1988.

LVMH bought Loewe in 1996. The group installed fashion designers to modernise it: Narciso Rodriguez from 1997 to 2000, José Enrique Oña Selfa from 2001, and then the British accessories specialist Stuart Vevers from 2008 to 2013, who strengthened the bag business before leaving for Coach.

The house was transformed by Jonathan Anderson, the Northern Irish founder of JW Anderson, who was appointed in 2013 and showed his first collections in 2014. He redesigned the logo, moved the shows to Paris and built Loewe around craft, art and surreal humour. The Puzzle bag of 2015, cut from geometric panels that fold flat, became a modern classic, followed by the Hammock, Flamenco, Basket and Squeeze bags, and he founded the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, first awarded in 2017. His collections played with trompe-l'oeil, oversized proportions and sculptural accessories, and his marketing, from Studio Ghibli collaborations to a widely shared social-media strategy, made a once-quiet Spanish house one of the most talked-about in the world. Anderson left in March 2025 and moved to Dior.

LVMH named Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the American duo behind Proenza Schouler, as joint creative directors in March 2025. Their first collection, for spring 2026, was shown in Paris in October 2025, leaning on bright colour and graphic leather. Pascale Lepoivre has been chief executive since 2016. Nearly two centuries after the Madrid workshop opened, leather remains the house's language.