On December 1st, LOEWE opened its first store in the Netherlands. Located on Amsterdam’s P.C. Hoofstraat, the fashion house’s flagship store features a sleek black and white window display, sealing a long-awaited addition to the city’s flagship shopping district.
Conceived by creative director Jonathan Anderson, LOEWE‘s refined blend of art, craftsmanship and culture comes to life in this beautiful two-storey, 129-square-metre space. The shop presents a full range of women’s ready-to-wear and accessories including handbags, shoes, scarves, hats, jewellery, wallets and card holders, complemented by select pieces from the house‘s growing art collection.
Echoing the intimate and luxurious ambience of other LOEWE spaces such as the recently opened CASA LOEWE Barcelona and the new CASA LOEWE Lisbon flagship shop on Avenida da Liberdade, the P.C. Hoofstraat store combines handcrafted details with modern flourish. Handmade glazed ceramics are present throughout the shop in a variety of warm tones such as red, pink and amber, adding a contrast to the coolness of the light maple wood shelves and concrete floors, walls and furniture. Marble, ceramic and glass podiums, many filled with light bulbs, complete the contemporary ambience. These podiums are a signature element of LOEWE‘s stores, here providing a more industrial counterbalance to the natural textures of earth and clay.
The choice of furniture, which brings additional harmony to the space, is also central to LOEWE‘s design concept. Gerrit Thomas Rienveld‘s Utretch armchairs are composed around a series of forceful right angles and sit alongside elegant, understated martini side tables. George Nakashima‘s armchairs are the product of a singular philosophy centred on simplicity and respect for the natural grain, contours and properties of each piece of wood.
LOEWE, in keeping with its commitment to creating an expansive anthology of art, craft and design, has selected a series of hand-picked works from the Arameo collection to distribute throughout the space. The quirky ceramics of Ron Nagle, who emerged from the California Clay movement and quickly created his own abstract visual language, are present in the form of two small glazed mugs with thick handles. Jos Devriendt‘s Night & Day 383 (2021) welcomes visitors on the upper floor; the mushroom-shaped lamp in celadon green and raku orange enamel adds a unique note to the environment. Meanwhile, Tomonari Hashimoto‘s Untitled (2021) exemplifies the Japanese artist’s tactile process with its swirling surface, created through repeated firing and charring to create a rainbow of metallic oxides reminiscent of an oil slick. Hashimoto was a finalist for the LOEWE Craft Prize in 2019.
On the walls, small and large-scale works invite the viewer to pause and observe. Through his vivid Spring with an Angel (2022) Cian-Yu Bai calls us to reflect on the constant flow of the world and its changing perspectives. The untitled oil painting by the antiquarian artist and poet Frank Walter, featuring a red sailboat, is particularly spirited, while the shells, insects and butterflies of the 17th century Flemish painter Jan Van Kessel offer a powerful still-life study.
This diverse set of media, periods and forms is characteristic of LOEWE‘s approach to the world of art and craftsmanship, bringing together the historical and the contemporary in a space dedicated to intelligent visual expression.
LOEWE P.C. Hoofstraat
Pieter Cornelisz. Hoofstraat 97,
1071 BR Amsterdam
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