JW Anderson Presents Men's and Women's SS21 Collections in a Literal Box
Watch Jonathan Anderson guide viewers through the new season.
JW Anderson has unveiled its Spring/Summer 2021 menswear and womenswear collections, revealed through photographs and video due to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of presenting a typical runway show, the brand sent out boxes, created in collaboration with OK-RM, containing materials from both collections including fabric swatches, photographs of each look and pressed flowers.
In addition to these boxes, Jonathan Anderson walked viewers through the collections live. “This season we’ve decided to kind of make it a of piece of ephemera, this idea of mail art,” he explains.
The box arrives wrapped in leftover fabric screen-printed with text rendered by a calligrapher, complete with nails to hang it up. Upon opening it, recipients are greeted with a mask of a model, illustrated by Pol Anglada — “I wanted to create a character,” Anderson says.
Along with a list detailing each look, photographs of each piece are presented in different formats including perforated cardstock and posters. Looks — such as a mac trenchcoat fashioned as a cape-jacket-hoodie hybrid that Anderson highlights — are photographed on a mannequin topped with a variety of Pol Anglada face illustrations, adding a lifelike quality to an otherwise inanimate presentation.
Anderson goes on to detail the new season’s accessories, including a wicker bag with a chain-adorned leather lid (“It’s based on a very early ’20s fisherman’s bag”) and a hard-shell bucket bag.
Despite the challenges presented by the pandemic, Anderson concludes by detailing the unexpected upsides of quarantine. “This moment has been kind of good to sort of embrace new ways of being able to communicate,” he says. “I think going back to the making of letter-writing, or really kind of exploring how to kind of present information is something that I think has been at some moments poignant and at the same time, quite emotional to do. This collection…I will always remember doing.”
Jw Anderson
Jw Anderson
Jw Anderson
Jw Anderson
Jw Anderson
