Ring from the Loewe x Lynda Benglis collection.
Photo: Courtesy of Loewe
Loewe and Lynda Benglis Collaborate on a Collection of Wearable Art
The Spanish fashion house helps reinterpret the American artist’s sculptural forms on a smaller scale, adding gorgeous stones for limited-edition pieces available in April
The Loewe x Lynda Benglis Pleated Fan cuff in sterling silver complements a bejeweled top made exclusively for the maison’s spring/summer 2024 women’s show. Photo: Molly Lowe; Courtesy of Loewe
The relationship between American artist Lynda Benglis and the Spanish fashion house of Loewe got off to a splashy start last June, when three of her fountain works took pride of place on the brand’s menswear show runway. The glittering effect of dancing water enhanced an already sparkly collection.
Three months later, at the spring/summer 2024 womenswear event, held in a vast tent on the grounds of 14th-century Château de Vincennes near Paris, six large furling metal sculptures created a pathway for the models’ catwalk journey, while rings, bracelets, necklaces, and ear cuffs shimmering with pastel-colored crystals accessorized their stealth-luxe looks. “Jewelry is the first thing I noticed when I was a kid,” admits the artist, who created the pieces for Loewe over the summer in her Santa Fe, New Mexico, studio. “And that led me into making art.”
Although fashion and art have long been bedfellows, Loewe’s creative director, Irishman Jonathan Anderson, brings the two together with more authority than most. The stores display impressive artworks—Alvaro Barrington in London; Paul Pfeiffer in Los Angeles; Pablo Picasso, of course, in Barcelona—and to evoke his impressions of the city, Anderson recently curated a show in London art gallery Offer Waterman that mingled Lucian Freud with Florian Krewer.
The Loewe x Lynda Benglis Wow cuff in colored aluminum from the spring/ summer 2024 women’s collection. Photo: Molly Lowe; Courtesy of Loewe
Black Window (2021) by Benglis is made from Everdur bronze with a black patina. Photo: Courtesy of Loewe
“We’ve worked with various artists over the years,” says Andrew Bonacina, who has been Loewe’s art consultant for some time now. “There is never a brief; we ask them what they’d like to do. In Lynda’s case, it’s the first time she’s explored the wider range of what could be done at this smaller scale but still using the motifs that reoccur in her work.”
Gold earrings are finished with a brilliantly hued polyurethane pour; anodized-aluminum cuffs have the quality of crumpled paper; bangles are derived directly from the sculptures that dotted the runway. “These come from the paper-glitter pieces that she’s been making for the last ten years,” says Bonacina, surveying all the jewelry backstage after the runway show, pinpointing a series of irregular crystal-encrusted shapes, including a sterling-silver cuff to be worn around the ear, decorated with yellow, white, and violet stones. All will be on sale in Loewe stores beginning in April as limited editions.
Lynda Benglis’s Zero Cobra (2020) sculpture. Photo: Courtesy of Loewe
Loewe x Lynda Benglis Glitter Fragment ear cuff (2023). Photo: Courtesy of Loewe
“Every piece is like a miniature wearable version of one of her sculptures”
Jonathan Anderson
Benglis made a name for herself in the late 1960s with free-form sculptures created by pouring pigmented latex. Moving to metal casting in the 1970s, she has kept one eye on subverting minimalism and the other on the relationship of the body to the work. “I see Lynda’s attitude and confidence in this collection,” says Anderson. “I love the way she plays on bad taste, using glitter and wax, going from the antagonistic to the cerebral. Every piece is like a miniature wearable version of one of her sculptures.”
“Lynda is interested in what happens to the work beyond the moment of its making,” adds Bonacina. Or as Benglis herself says, “I just want it to roll, to swing, to move.” And this new collection certainly does.
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2024 Spring Issue under the headline “Rare Form.” Subscribe to the magazine.
Cover: Ring from the Loewe x Lynda Benglis collection.
Photo: Courtesy of Loewe
