“I feel more like a store owner than a brand-owner now. It’s such an enjoyable thing. I love being in the stores.” The risk Jonathan Anderson’s taken by converting his own-name business into a purveyor of an eclectically bonkers array of merchandise in his own shops (and online) has been paying off nicely.
His second London store opened just before Christmas in Pimlico, an area long renowned for superior interior design stores. All of these moves—including the disbandment of runway shows and ceasing of wholesale—are out-of-the-box thinking for a fashion company. It was an odd time of year to open, and the location demands a special trip. Nevertheless: “It’s been doing really, really well,” Anderson says. The next shop will open in New York at the end of the year.
Runway displays have been replaced by lookbook shoots populated by multi-generational collections of his friends, actors, models, and collaborators. Here, happy, nutty, personality-reveling vibes prevail: the journalist Tim Blanks digging in with a garden fork, stylist Camille Bidault-Waddington and partner Alice Temple, Kylie being Kylie. Lots more. “They’re people I look up to, admire, and are fun to be with,” Anderson says.
His main point is to demonstrate “how JW Anderson can exist through the simple things. Styles that slowly change. Adding new objects that are sourced and crafted around Britain, which takes time. Because”—he takes a pause for a giant understatement here—“the other part of my life is so rushed.”
Indeed. Anderson is about to present his second men’s collection for Dior in Paris on January 21, followed by his debut couture show for the house five days later. In planning out how to manage his namesake brand at the same time, he’s importing a great deal of the craft-and-antiques zeal he established so successfully at Loewe. So now you can buy a Tudor-inspired rush hamper woven in Somerset, restored old-fashioned garden implements, bronze-cast peach paperweights, organically-dyed cushions, stripey hand-brushes, and taper candles, amongst the existing inventory of vernacular English crockery, and much else.
It’s the attraction of the esoteric alongside the pleasingly ordinary. Both of equal merit. Even without the intrinsic attraction of the clothes, it’s no wonder that JW Anderson has become a gift-shopping magnet with a cult following that has demonstrably grown outwards from its exclusively youth-centric beginnings. Simply, there’s nothing else like it.
