Loewe names Proenza Schouler duo creative directors

A succession that matters

Loewe names Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the American founders of Proenza Schouler, as its creative directors. The appointment, made public in March 2025, resolves one of the most closely watched questions in luxury fashion: who would follow Jonathan Anderson, whose long tenure had transformed the Spanish house into one of the industry's most talked-about brands. Anderson departs after more than a decade to take up creative direction at Dior, leaving a role defined largely by his own influence.

For Loewe, the choice sets the terms of its next chapter. The house is owned by LVMH and has spent the past decade being read almost entirely through Anderson's sensibility. Handing the studio to an outside duo, rather than promoting from within or continuing a single-designer model, signals both continuity and change: continuity in the ambition to be led by strong creative voices, change in the identity of those voices and in the shift to a shared directorship.

Who the new directors are

McCollough and Hernandez founded Proenza Schouler in New York in 2002, building it into one of the most respected American labels of its generation. Their work there was known for a rigorous, considered approach to ready-to-wear and for a strong sense of construction, qualities that map onto Loewe's identity as a house rooted in craft. Their move to Madrid marks their first appointment at a heritage European maison and their first at a brand of Loewe's scale within a group like LVMH.

The transition was not without cost to their previous venture. The pair stepped down from Proenza Schouler, where Rachel Scott was subsequently named creative director, closing a chapter of more than two decades at the label they created. Taking on Loewe meant leaving the brand most associated with their names, a measure of the opportunity the Spanish house represented.

Following a defining tenure

The scale of the challenge lies in what preceded it. When Anderson arrived in 2013, Loewe was a respected but quiet leather goods house. Over the following decade he rebuilt its identity, reworked its Anagram mark, introduced products that became modern signatures, and gave the brand a cultural presence through art, craft and film that few of its peers matched. By 2025 Loewe was, in perception terms, closely bound to a single designer, which made the handover both an opportunity and a risk.

Succeeding a founder-scale figure is among the hardest tasks in fashion. The incoming directors must honour the equity built under Anderson while establishing enough of their own point of view to justify the change. The appointment of an established duo with their own strong identity suggests LVMH judged that Loewe needed authorship rather than caretaking, and that the house was secure enough to absorb a new creative voice.

What the appointment signals

The decision reflects a wider pattern in luxury, where houses increasingly move designers between maisons in high-profile transfers, and where creative leadership is treated as a primary driver of brand value. Loewe's willingness to place its identity in the hands of newcomers, at the moment its most associated designer left for a larger role elsewhere, underlines how central the creative director has become to a modern fashion brand's positioning.

The directors made their debut with the spring/summer 2026 collection, presented in October 2025, offering the first public reading of their intentions. Early responses noted a continuity of language with the house they inherited, suggesting an evolution rather than a rupture. That approach carries its own logic: the equity Loewe accumulated over the previous decade is considerable, and preserving it while gradually introducing a new sensibility is a defensible way to manage a transition of this weight.

For a brand whose recent success has rested so heavily on creative direction, the appointment is the most consequential branding decision Loewe has made since 2013. It sets the identity, tone and ambition of the house for the years ahead, and the industry will read every collection and campaign that follows as evidence of how the transition is being handled.

The stakes extend beyond a single house. Loewe's revival over the previous decade had made it a reference point for how a heritage brand could be modernised, and its handling of this succession would be watched as a test case for the wider sector. A smooth transition would show that the value built under a defining designer can survive his departure; a stumble would suggest that such value is harder to transfer than luxury groups tend to assume.