Loewe (Madrid)
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| legal form | SA ( joint stock company ) |
| founding | 1846 |
| Seat | Madrid |
| management | Pascale Lepoivre |
| Number of employees | 1100 |
| sales | EUR 200 million |
| Branch | Fashion, leather goods |
| Website | loewe.com |
| Status 2011 | |
Loewe SA is a Spanish fashion company based in Madrid .
The company, which has been part of the luxury goods group LVMH since 1996, is known for high-priced leather goods and other luxury goods in the fashion industry. In 2011 the turnover was 200 million euros.
Company history
The German immigrant Heinrich Loewe Rössberg (1844–1929; known in Spain as Enrique Loewe) from Kassel met the two Spaniards José Silva and Florencio Rivas, who had been running a workshop for fur and leather goods there since 1846. In 1872 Enrique Loewe founded E. Loewe SA with the two Madrilenians. The year of foundation is that of the original workshop Silva and Rivas - the name of the German was chosen as the company name of the Sociedad anónima . In the same year Loewe opened its first retail store for leather goods in Madrid. In the second generation, the company was managed by Enrique Loewe Hinton (1879–1934), son of the founder, in 1905 as purveyor to the Spanish court .
Loewe Hinton bequeathed the company to his sons Enrique Loewe Knappe (1912–2016) and Germán Loewe Knappe. The former concentrated on international expansion from Madrid, while the latter managed Spanish business from Barcelona. In 1951 the two founded the public limited company Loewe SA , in which they accepted other shareholders, although they themselves retained the majority. In the years that followed, numerous Loewe stores were opened in Spain. In 1965 the founder's great-grandson, Enrique Loewe Lynch (* 1941), joined the company. From the end of the 1960s Loewe stores were also opened abroad, first in London in the then newly opened Hilton Hotel on Park Lane (1963), in Jermyn Street (1966) and finally in Old Bond Street (1969). In the 1970s, Loewe stores opened their doors in Tokyo and Hong Kong .
In 1972 Loewe's first perfume , called L , appeared for women. The first men's fragrance , Loewe para Hombre (later renamed Loewe pour homme ), followed in 1978. Both fragrances are still available today. The perfume series with women's and men's fragrances has been expanded over the years to include countless fragrances, including Aire (1985, women), Aura (1994, women), Esencia (1998, men), Agua de Loewe (2000, unisex), Solo (2004, men), 7 (2010, men), Loewe 001 (2016, both women and men). In the 2010s alone, over 50 new or variations of previous fragrances were brought onto the market.
Until 1980, the Loewe brothers together held 51% of the shares in the company. Germán Loewe Knappe then sold his share in the company to the Ruiz-Mateos family and their Rumasa empire , which ultimately owned 66% of Loewe. In January 1983, Loewe opened a boutique in the then newly built Trump Tower in New York City , which had cost more than three million dollars to set up and which was closed in 1986. On February 23, 1983 Rumasa was nationalized by the Spanish government under Felipe González because of massive indebtedness . The Spanish state awarded the contract for Loewe in 1984 to a consortium around the Urvois-Spínola group, to which Enrique Loewe Knappe also belonged. In 1985, Loewe under Urvois-Spinola with the French luxury goods group Louis Vuitton (from 1987 LVMH ), the company Loewe Internacional to sales of Loewe products outside Spain and the distribution of Loewe perfumes, in Loewe even 10% of the shares and LVMH 90% held. In 1986 Loewe's own men's fashion store was opened in Madrid. Bernard Arnault bought approx. 30% of Loewe for LVMH until 1992. In 1996, Loewe was completely taken over by LVMH and merged with Loewe Internacional .
In 1958, the fashion designer Vicente Vela was appointed Loewe's chief designer. In 1970 Vela created the Loewe logo, which is still used today in a modified form, consisting of four 'L' in a square and retired from the company in 1997 after forty years of service. In the 1960s and 70s, fashion designers such as Karl Lagerfeld , Giorgio Armani and Laura Biagiotti created women's collections for Loewe as guest designers. In 1997 LVMH appointed Narciso Rodriguez as a women's fashion designer at Loewe. Since then, Loewe has been represented with women's fashion at Paris Fashion Week with interruptions . Rodriguez was followed by José Enrique Oña Selfa in 2002. In July 2007, the Brit Stuart Vevers became chief designer at Loewe. Under Vevers, Loewe concentrated on the accessories business with handbags and, on the fringes, also women's fashion.
In September 2013, LVMH appointed Irishman Jonathan William Anderson, designer of his own fashion brand JW Anderson , as Loewe's creative director. Anderson had the Loewe brand lettering and logo renewed, created a new men's fashion line and expanded Loewe women's fashion. Anderson's Loewe women's fashion has been shown on the catwalk during the Paris Fashion Weeks since September 2014. In 2014, Anderson opened a Loewe design studio in Paris. In 2017, Anderson presented a furniture series from the Loewe Home range for the first time at the Milan Furniture Fair . In 2018, Anderson was appointed to the Loewe Board of Directors .
Loewe continues to produce in the Spanish plant in Getafe near Madrid and in Barcelona . According to its own information, Loewe employs around 1,100 people worldwide. Around 30% of sales were achieved at the beginning of the 2010s with the “Amazona” handbag model in the form of a bowling bag , which has been available since 1975 . In 2014 Loewe had 143 stores worldwide, 27 of them in Spain and 27 in Japan. Since then, more stores have opened, including in Miami (2015) and Melbourne (2016). In 2014 the first flagship store Casa Loewe opened its doors in Tokyo , where the company's collections are presented surrounded by art objects. In the same year a Casa Loewe followed in Milan and in 2016 one in Madrid.
Foundation Fundación Loewe SA
In 1988 Enrique Loewe Lynch founded the Loewe Fundación cultural foundation , which he handed over to his daughter Sheila in 2013. The foundation is active in the fields of poetry , dance , photography , arts and crafts .
The Loewe Award ( Premio Loewe or Premio Internacional de Poesía Fundación Loewe ), which was launched in the founding year of the foundation, is one of the most renowned awards in current Spanish poetry , sponsored by the Fundación Loewe and awarded annually. The prize money for the winner is 25,000 euros. The first award took place in 1988. Previous winners include Miguel Ángel Velasco (2002), Cristina Peri Rossi (2008) and Óscar Hahn (2014).
In 2002, the Foundation received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts ( Medalla de Oro al Mérito en las Bellas Artes ) from the Spanish Ministry of Culture for its work to promote culture . The award was the honorary chairman of the foundation, Enrique Loewe Lynch in September 2003 by the Spanish Royal House of Juan Carlos I presented.
About Loewe Foundation chief designer Jonathan William Anderson in 2016 the created Loewe Craft Prize (dt. Loewe craft Price ) for artisans , which is awarded every year since 2017 and more with a prize money of 50,000 euros for the winner, as well as 5,000 euros for two Awarded is endowed. The first winner in 2017 with a series of oak vessels was the German wood designer Ernst Gamperl, who received the Hessian State Prize for German arts and crafts in 1993 .
Web links
- Website of loewe.com
- Website by perfumesloewe.com
- Fundación Loewe blog
Individual evidence
- ↑ new CEO at Loewe (Vogue.co.uk)
- ↑ Key figures - employees at loewe.com
- ↑ a b Spain’s got talent on fashion.telegraph.co.uk
- ↑ Perfume - L de Loewe ( Memento of the original dated August 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on perfumesloewe.com
- ↑ LOEWE LEATHER ARRIVES nytimes.com, September 21, 1983
- ↑ A NEW WAVE OF BOUTIQUES ROLLS IN FROM EUROPE nytimes.com, February 7, 1983
- ↑ Where talents learn to dance faz.net, June 21, 2013
- ↑ Vicente Vela at LOEWE blogfundacionloewe.es, February 4, 2016
- ↑ JW Anderson becomes creative director at Loewe , vogue.de, September 26, 2013
- ↑ Loewe opens design studio in Paris fashionnetwork.com, April 3, 2014
- ↑ Young designer star JW Anderson is just pretending to be harmless welt.de, August 5, 2015
- ↑ Medallas de Oro al Mérito en las Bellas Artes mecd.gob.es, accessed: April 20, 2018
- ↑ Medalla de Oro al Mérito en las Bellas Artes List of awards on the Spanish government website
- ↑ "Crafts are timeless" welt.de, February 1, 2018
