Unawareness and independence. “We didn’t know we were doing luxury. We do things well, in our own way: in a deeply artisanal way”. These are the words of Enrique Loewe, 80, the fourth generation of the family that founded the homonymous Spanish brand, owned by the LVMH group. A brand that this year is celebrating its 175th anniversary. The brand was founded in Madrid by the German immigrant Heinrich Roessberg Loewe in 1846. Starting from that leather shop, Loewe has become one of the coolest houses on the fashion and luxury scene.
We do things right
In the interview with CincoDías, a supplement to the Spanish newspaper El País (from which the image on the left is taken), Enrique Loewe (founder and honorary president of the Loewe Foundation) talks about luxury and craftsmanship.
“We didn’t know we were doing luxury. Our aspiration was to do things well. Be consistent with the artisan soul that we have helped to enhance, as a culture and as a company. Later, they called it luxury, but we did things our way and in a deeply artisanal way”. A modus operandi based (also) on the awareness that “fashion, beauty and design have a lot to do with culture”.
Luxury is not wealth
“Luxury has often been confused with new wealth – says Loewe -, with having a lot of money or with the price. Luxury is not a visible and brilliant tackiness, but a profound expression of the sense of beauty of an object, of a life or of a person. I believe in true luxury”. In other words, “in something more linked to the personality, the seriousness, the beauty of a brand, a person or a fact, not in what is glossy and flashy”.
Creating beauty with your hands
How to enhance those who produce this luxury, that is, the artisans? “By working on this idea. We must build and transmit these values to young people – continues Loewe -. We need to reinforce the sense of creating beauty with our hands.
It is that concept of work transmitted by our craftsmen when they passed an object from one hand to the other. Creating a sense of pride that being artisans of beauty is a very important task. Loewe is made by hands, by craftsmen, by people: not by businessmen”.
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