Americanness is a loaded concept right now. For obvious reasons.
So it was striking that on Friday, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, two New York designers making their debut as co-creative directors of Loewe, leaned into the idea. And not in the fraught what-does-it-all-mean-now sense, but in a way that served as a potent reminder of the freedom, ease and uncomplicated momentum that once seemed ineffably American, especially when expressed in clothes.
In doing so, they created one of the most refreshingly energetic collections of the whole season thus far — not to mention one of the few spring collections that actually looked like spring.
An Ellsworth Kelly color field painting, “Yellow Panel with Red Curve,” hung at the entrance to the venue. There were primary colors on the runway, and a lack of fuss to what only appeared to be simple clothes.
The sort that suggested the fantasy of a summer spent schmoozing with art dealers at cocktail parties in Water Mill or on the Costa Brava with mezcal margaritas and heaping bowls of olives and baby tomatoes, salt-stained paperbacks on the coffee table and wild chatter in the air.
There’s a tendency among American designers, when they get to Paris, to fall victim to an inferiority complex; the stereotype that says France is where real fashion happens, and New York is for, ahem, sportswear (cue upturned nose). But while getting the reins of a big French house — or, in the case of Loewe, a Spanish house now owned by a French group — is still considered a sign of arrival, it can cause designers to tie themselves up in knots trying to prove they have what it takes.
Some avoid the trap, like Daniel Roseberry, the Texan at Schiaparelli, who has deftly updated the house that surrealism built by combining fantasy and modernity. This season, that meant playing a terrific game of hide-and-seek with the body in simple dresses and suits with punched-out polka dots, like little windows onto what’s underneath; gowns that seem to be peeling away in strips, like old wallpaper (a reference to the classic 1938 Schiap “tears dress”); one simple black sheath with a life-size white line drawing of a nude from Mr. Roseberry’s own sketchbook superimposed on the front.
But too often it results in overcomplicated, overwrought clothes.
Indeed, this is not the first time Mr. McCollough and Mr. Hernandez have worked in Paris. They spent two seasons in the late 2010s showing the brand they founded straight out of fashion school, Proenza Schouler, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, loading it up with decorative extras before heading back home to the Empire State with their tails somewhat between their legs.
They remained favored sons of New York and stars of the local scene, at least until they stepped down from their brand in January, but it always seemed as if they had their sights set on Europe. When they finally made it back, the big question hanging over their Loewe debut was: Had they learned something?
The answer was yes.
“We can’t ignore where we come from,” Mr. McCollough said backstage after the show as he and Mr. Hernandez, who had tears in his eyes, were besieged by well-wishers (and parents). “We don’t want to hide from it.”
Instead, they merged their own identity with the history of the brand — both as the oldest Spanish leather-goods house, with all the craftsmanship that implies, and more recently as one of fashion’s great success stories under Jonathan Anderson (now at Dior), who made it into something of an all-access art project.
They did it with molded bell-shape leather coats and sleeveless mini dresses in pure shades of blue, red and yellow that recalled both the Spanish flag and the Kelly painting.
With “denim” jeans and jeans jackets that were actually stretch leather treated by hand to resemble fuzzy cotton; striped leather polo-shirt minidresses, with the stripes made from layers of skins, like plywood; and what looked like little frocks of terry-cloth toweling that turned out to have been 3-D-printed and hand-painted so they shimmered with movement like the sun on the water. With clear plastic jelly pumps, under which socks of different colors could be worn, depending on the outfit: one shoe, many liners, just a great idea.
With sportswear, in other words, transformed by technique and the confidence not to insist too much. That’s one kind of American dream, realized.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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