JW Anderson

Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson established JW Anderson in 2008, with the fledgling label showing on-schedule during London Fashion Week that same year through a distinctive accessories collection. Originally from Magherafelt in Northern Ireland, Anderson set up the brand in London, where it initially focused on menswear before moving into womenswear in 2010.

The proposition from the start was a shared, gender-fluid wardrobe, an idea that drew sharp early reactions. A Daily Mail headline in 2013 asked if there was a prize for the stupidest outfit at Men’s Fashion Week in London, running alongside photos from the JW Anderson fall-winter 2013 collection, which showed ruffled shorts, dresses, bandeau tops, and riding boots worn by male models. The label that stuck, in friendlier press, was gender-deconstructionist.

Menswear is where the brand began and where its design language was first tested in public. Anderson broke ground in gender-fluid menswear in 2013 when he showed ruffle-hem leather shorts on male models for his namesake brand at London Fashion Week. The vocabulary across collections has included exaggerated proportions, draped knits, kilt-like skirts over trousers, paisley pyjama dressing, and footwear that splices loafers with heels or chain detailing.

Where many designers are associated with specific archetypes of manhood, like Dolce and Gabbana’s sun-kissed hunk or Hedi Slimane’s wraithlike romantic at Dior Homme in the early aughts, Anderson’s vision is more multifaceted.

Recognition followed quickly. JW Anderson won both men’s and women’s brand of the year at British Fashion Council’s The Fashion Awards in 2015, the first brand to pick up both awards in the same year.

The business shifted in 2013, when LVMH acquired a minority stake in the brand and appointed Anderson as creative director of Spanish brand Loewe, a dual role he held for over a decade. The namesake label continued to operate from London while Loewe ran from Paris and Madrid, and Anderson kept producing six JW Anderson collections a year alongside his Loewe output and a long-running Uniqlo collaboration.

After 11 years at Loewe, Anderson stepped down as the house’s creative director on March 17 2025, was announced as artistic director of Dior menswear in April, and in June 2025 was further named creative director of Dior womenswear and couture collections. That transition reshaped JW Anderson itself. The brand announced an indefinite pause on traditional runway shows to shift toward a lifestyle-oriented model emphasizing artisanal products, homeware, and collaborations with makers like Wedgwood, with the Soho store reopening with expanded offerings.

Today the label sits at the experimental end of London fashion, dressing a customer who buys into Anderson’s cabinet-of-curiosities approach as much as the clothes themselves.