Finally: The Very First Loewe Store in US

Anderson, together with LOEWE’s architecture division, designed the store’s luminous open-plan interior around a central element of outstanding cultural value and indelible visual impact: An authentic 18th-century hórreo (granary) found in a small town near the border between Galicia and Portugal, the first edifice of its kind to be shown in the United States.

The striking construction punctuates an airy interior of stone floors, museum-quality lighting, walls painted in LOEWE’s smoke-white ‘Humo’ colour and vast expanses of glass. Combined, these elements create a striking backdrop for LOEWE’s latest collections, including the iconic Amazona  and Flamenco bags —newly redesigned to bring out their pure form and incredible softness— as well as the Puzzle , a completely new bag by Anderson and secret icon in the making.

Historic utilitarian structures, hórreos  were used since the Middle Ages in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula to store and dry the harvest from the region’s grain fields. The stone barn imported for LOEWE’s new Miami store measures 11 metres (36 feet) in length and features this type of building’s typical rectangular proportions, as well as characteristic stilts that elevate it from the ground to prevent humidity, mold, and access by rodents.

According to Anderson, the transplanted element reinforces the cultural fluidity that is central to LOEWE: ‘We wanted to show a fragment of Spanish history in a modern way: abstracted, displaced, a building inside of a building. It shows how the information codified in architecture acquires new meaning when it travels, and something that served a specific function takes on a new character in a foreign landscape. We brought a hórreo to Miami and inserted it in the middle of a white box. It’s part of the knowledge of where LOEWE is from, transferred to another time and place .’

For a modern graphic effect, the hórreo  inside LOEWE’s Miami store will be shown as a naked granite structure, without a roof and stripped of the wooden slats that used to cover its sides, thus highlighting the raw stone’s pure lines. While the hórreo’s  origin links with Miami’s own Hispanic roots and identity, the structure’s rough-hewn, aged character (to a great extent, the granary has been left in the state it was found) creates a positive tension amid the burnished surfaces of the city’s design district.

With its first boutique in the United States, LOEWE extends the house’s legacy in art and design to a new time and new shore. LOEWE began in 1846 in Madrid as a cooperative of leather artisans and is part of LVMH. In 2014, newly-appointed creative director Jonathan Anderson launched a reconfiguration of the brand, reinterpreting its core values and visual identity for today. His acclaimed ready-to-wear and accessories collections for the house are presented during Men’s and Women’s Fashion Week in Paris. By connecting past and present with cultural awareness and a timely edit of products, Anderson is creating a template for the future. The new Miami boutique joins LOEWE’s online store and existing network of stockists in selected US cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Costa Mesa, San Francisco, Dallas, and Boston.