A playful turn through the archive: LOEWE retells luxury longevity in China

Heritage luxury houses often celebrate anniversaries with grand archival displays and cultural narratives, rendering the past weighty, reverent, and monumental. But LOEWE, the world’s second oldest luxury fashion house, opened its 180th anniversary campaign on an unexpected note, exhibiting its nearly two centuries of craft through small acts of levity and play. Starting June, the maison founded in Madrid in 1846 has been unfolding the celebration in China with a range of designs and activities that span a mischievous lion motif, a reinvented Amazona, a crafted capsule, a painterly animation detailing the house’s history, and localized activations from a hutong exploration to collaboration with indie bookshops. The lion motif, drawn from LOEWE’s German meaning, especially designed for this 180th-year occasion, constitutes an unlikely element for a storied house. Crouching atop the gold ceramic façade of LOEWE’s Shanghai flagship and in a street of Beijing’s bustling Sanlitun, it gives a lively and young edge to the whole campaign, calling back to the label’s inception. The red, playful, childlike figure drawn in dryly comic lines darts through LOEWE’s long, accumulated past, stirring the archive back into view. At the center of the resurfacing is the Amazon 180, a reinvention of the house’s 1975 icon, born at a turning point for Spain and for women’s roles in society. The casting around the bag adds another layer. Lensed by seasoned female photographer Talia Chetrit, the ensemble brings together women across generations who carry their own creative and social influence, from actress Kara Wai whose career has expanded the possibilities for women on screen to artist Kara Walker whose work examines gender and identity. Together, these elements allow the campaign to feature both something old – the reimagining of one of LOEWE's most storied designs, and something new – the playful lion motif. This pairing of preservation and reinvention not just sits at the heart of the house's ethos but also gives the anniversary an anti-monumental edge in an industry that usually turns heritage into monumentality. Anniversary, without monumentality LOEWE doesn’t consign its anniversary story to a distant past — a world before lightbulb and telephone, but weaves it into every fabric of urban life in China, unfolding through an array of participatory activities,starting in May. On May 28, a cocktail night in Casa LOEWE Shanghai set the tone. The Casa concept brings LOEWE craft, design codes, together with Spanish vitality, though each store has a bespoke design scheme. Casa Loewe Shanghai, which opened at Jing’an Kerry Center in 2025, was an upgrade from the previous landmark store established in 2008 into a space resembling an art theater. Its over 35,000 golden ceramic tiles were handcrafted in Spain, echoing the golden hues of the nearby Jing’an Temple. It’s a “casa” in its fullest expression — home to art and craft, creativity and savoir-faire. The celebration then extended to Beijing, where LOEWE is seeking a connection to China’s past. It designed five red rickshaws with the adorable lion making a deadpan face on the canopies. Over the weekend, it arranged a “lion hunt” by rickshaw through the hutongs in Beijing’s historic quarters, making connections to both the old Beijing ride and the carved stone lions that carry the city’s history. The installation in Sanlitun extends the same idea, turning the lion motif into a narrative device that moves through LOEWE’s 180-year timeline, including the year 2001 when it opened its first mainland boutique in Beijing. The mischievous lion enters the scene through the house’s name itself. In 1846, a collective of artisans founded a small leather workshop on a cobbled street in Madrid. Six years later, German craftsman Enrique Loewe Roessberg unified it under his family name — Loewe, meaning “lion” in German. Painted in Spanish red, a signature color representing the country, the lion is also a nod to the brand’s origin. Besides engaging with the city, the house has entered more intimate cultural spaces. A digital game and stickers are accompanying magazine activations staged in beautifully designed bookstores such as SINAN BOOKS and dododo book in Shanghai, as well as Jetlag Books and naïve in Beijing. Chinese consumers might not feel an instinctive emotional connection to European luxury houses though they are not unfamiliar with them. Apart from these activations, there’s an animation narrated by legendary Spanish actor Antonio Banderas. This short film traces LOEWE’s birth and growth in the sensory world of Madrid — from the cobbled street to the renowned window displays by artistic director José Pérez de Rozas, from the Spanish royal court to Hollywood celebrities — renders the brand's story in a more intimate, memorable way. The return of the Amazona — always with women at its core Behind a celebration spanning the country’s two metropolises lies LOEWE’s nuanced understanding of China and its inventive approach to forging connections. Over the past few years, luxury consumers in China have grown more selective in luxury consumption given economic headwinds and shifts in habits. Distinctive stories have become part of a standard by which brands are evaluated. Hence China provides a perfect stage for LOEWE to display its distinct spirit — craft, playfulness, artistry, sensitivity. Through the campaign, LOEWE is not just launching a box-ticking market exercise in a lucrative market, but translating its culture along with its tactile, rigorous craft heritage into an experience that Chinese consumers find fun, fresh, and significant. That act of translation comes into clearest focus in the reinvention of the Amazona, which connects the house’s archive with a wider social and cultural memory. The original Amazona, now 50 years old, has long been a house icon. Named after the Amazons, the female warriors of Greek mythology, the tote bag, in an elegant rectangular silhouette and with a spacious interior to hold the necessary, was introduced in 1975 — a watershed year in Spanish history which marked the beginning of the country’s transition to democracy with the death of caudillo Francisco Franco. The year was also a turning point for women in Spain, as legal restrictions on them during the Francoist era, including the requirement for women to obtain their husbands’ consent to work, own property, open bank accounts, or even travel, were abolished. “Women were expected to return to the kitchen, to perform the role of perfect mother and wife, and to dress somberly and modestly.” Eilidh Duffy, a historian studying how political upheavals and social movements influence body and fashion, described women’s lives between 1939 and 1975. In post-Franco Spain, women began entering the public sphere with newfound freedom and autonomy, and a groundswell of feminist movements let the country join the second-wave feminism already shaping Europe's gender scene. Over those years of sweeping gender change, the Amazona emerged as a companion for the burgeoning female workforce returning to the office. The signature accessory, in various colors and sizes, has since been interpreted by numerous pop culture figures in celebration of women's independence. It gained particular popularity through the 2000s so that it was reimagined in 2021 when the brand marked its 175th anniversary. The Amazona 180 was added to the repertoire this year, carrying that legacy forward as the first LOEWE bag by Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who were appointed the house’s creative directors last year. So it also marks the beginning of a new creative chapter for LOEWE. Half a century after its debut, its return to the center of the 180th anniversary campaign has gone way beyond a product revival but settled into a layered vessel of social memory — one about women’s changing place in public life. In this sense, the reinvented Amazona sits at the intersection of brand history, gendered modernity, and a new creative era. The house is therefore not only selling an icon, but exploring what kind of sociocultural memory a handbag can carry. China as the stage to relive a Madrid memory The Amazona story constitutes a continuation of LOEWE’s female focus in China. Last spring, LOEWE launched “When She Takes Action,” a program centered on female creators that unfolded across two Casa Conversations, which were later released as the opening episodes of the LOEWE FM podcast, and a poetry cocktail night at Casa LOEWE Shanghai. The first conversation, for example, brought together writer Chen Danyan, screenwriter Qin Wen, and documentary filmmaker and writer Zhou Yijun to discuss women’s creativity and identity. The program and the reinvented Amazona this time, carrying the weight of political and social change, speak directly to LOEWE’s Chinese female clientele who are increasingly drawn to a more versatile vision of womanhood — one defined by agency and possibility. Overall, the 180th anniversary campaign is a continuation of LOEWE’s China-facing cultural buildout. Since opening its first mainland store in 2001, it has expanded quickly across the country. In 2024, Shanghai became the venue for its first public exhibition, “Crafted World,” which showcased multiple seasons of its capsule collections, from sheafs of the richly dyed nappa leathers to the Howl’s Moving Castle bag from LOEWE’s Studio Ghibli collaboration. Capsule collections have long been where craft comes into sharper relief because they have been one of the key formats through which LOEWE carries its craft story forward, season by season. LOEWE has long presented its past and present in a cumulative series of vignettes, culminating in the 180th anniversary campaign. As widely recognized in the luxury world, LOEWE, known for hand, leather, and commitment to art, rarely takes itself too seriously. The campaign is a clear sign that, after 180 years, it still knows how to balance playfulness with uncompromising craft. That balance feels particularly apt in China where consumers are looking less for inherited prestige than for creative storytelling that justifies attention. Luxury anniversaries often follow a familiar script: founding years, legendary ateliers, royal patrons, iconic products, archive revivals — a grammar built around the idea that time proves value. When a childlike lion, a storybook-style animation, and a color-saturated magazine provides a sentimental value while a reinvented Amazona evokes change in women's lives and gender roles, the brand is reworking its heritage through craft and imagination. This layered, textured approach amounts to a form of anti-monumental anniversary storytelling, and perhaps a more convincing way for an old luxury house to sustain its longevity. With the new creative duo now beginning to establish their presence at the house, that continuity may matter even more: For a luxury house, longevity depends not on preserving its archive untouched, but on keeping it alive.

A playful turn through the archive: LOEWE retells luxury longevity in China

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A playful turn through the archive: LOEWE retells luxury longevity in China

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag