Loewe

Loewe is the oldest luxury house in Spain, founded in 1846, and the one in the LVMH stable most plainly built on leather rather than fashion. The name is pronounced low-EH-veh, in three syllables. The house spent 170 years respected and little known outside Spain, then spent the last decade turning craft into its whole design language.

We like Loewe because the craft claim is not retrospective marketing. The workshop existed before the name, and the leather school the house runs today is a continuation of the same thing rather than a heritage exercise.

Behind the brand

History of Loewe

A group of leather artisans set up a cooperative workshop in Madrid in 1846. Enrique Loewe Roessberg, a German craftsman, joined in 1872 and gave the house its name. Royal patronage followed, and Loewe became a supplier to the Spanish court in 1905.

For most of the twentieth century Loewe was a Spanish institution rather than an international one, known for suede, nappa and the anagram logo Vicente Vela designed in 1970, four interlocking Ls that still read as a graphic rather than a monogram. The house also built a serious perfumery business at home, and Loewe fragrances have been part of Spanish life since the 1970s.

LVMH took a stake in 1996. The house changed decisively in 2013, when Jonathan Anderson arrived and reframed it around craft, ceramics, textiles and a sense of humor. He turned Loewe into a cultural project as much as a leather brand, and he created the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, an annual international award for artisans that puts the house’s money directly into the skills it depends on. Anderson left for Dior in 2025, and Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the founders of Proenza Schouler, took the studio the same year.

The Loewe collection

The Puzzle is the signature bag, a cuboid cut from flat leather panels that fold into shape. It carries by hand, on the shoulder or across the body, and collapses flat for travel. The Hammock, the Flamenco, the Gate and the woven raffia Basket complete a range we cover in our guide to the best Loewe bags, and the Basket has become the house’s summer staple in its own right.

The Amazona, introduced in 1975, is the archive piece and still the most straightforwardly useful bag Loewe makes. It carries no visible logo and reads as luggage in miniature.

Under Anderson the ready-to-wear became just as talked-about as the bags. The trompe-l’oeil tank tops and the second-skin leather trousers turned into viral pieces, and the studio’s cultural capsules, especially its recurring collections with Studio Ghibli built around Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and My Neighbor Totoro, gave the house a following well outside the usual luxury audience.

Craftsmanship and materials

Loewe is known for a very soft nappa, and its suede and shearling are the categories that made the Spanish reputation in the first place. Production stays in Spain, at the house’s own factory in Getafe outside Madrid, and Loewe trains its leatherworkers at a school on the same site.

The Puzzle is the clearest demonstration of the technique. Building a rigid three-dimensional shape out of flat panels means the leather has to be cut and the seams aligned exactly, because the geometry leaves no room for a millimeter of drift. Get one panel wrong and the bag will not fold. It is worth handling in person.

Loewe perfume, candles and home

Loewe’s home and fragrance line draws almost as much search interest as the bags. The scented candles are the entry point, built around single herbaceous notes such as tomato leaves, oregano and coriander that smell more like a Mediterranean garden than a perfume counter. The line extends into room sprays, hand soap and diffusers, and joins a perfumery that Loewe has run for decades.

The candles are collectible in their own right. Short of a card holder, they are the most accessible way into the brand.

Where to buy Loewe

Loewe sells through its own boutiques, its official site and selected luxury retailers. The Basket bags, the candles and the small leather goods are the accessible entry points, and the Puzzle is the piece most worth trying in person, because the carry options change how it reads on the body. Loewe has also kept a foot in performance footwear through its ongoing collaboration with the Swiss brand On, whose Cloudtilt sneaker put the house’s design on a genuinely technical running shoe.

Loewe price

Loewe prices alongside Celine and below Hermès. Small leather goods start in the mid hundreds, the Puzzle and the Hammock in the low-to-mid thousands, and the woven and exotic pieces above that. Because Loewe is a Spanish house, its European prices often run below the United States, and non-EU visitors can reclaim the VAT on a purchase made in Spain, so the same bag can cost noticeably less bought at home than abroad. The Amazona is the value buy in the range: fifty years in production, no visible logo, and the same Getafe leatherwork as everything else on the shelf.