Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s spring 2026 debut for Loewe last September was just the start of a milestone year for the brand. Their arrival coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Amazona, the house’s first named handbag, while 2026 marks Loewe’s 180th anniversary. To kick off the festivities, the designers returned the ur-work bag to the runway, reshaped for looser, hybrid work lifestyles. One of several reinterpretations over time, the Amazona 180 is the most radical. Suspended from a single toron top handle, the missing counterpart seemingly lost to the era of daily commuting, the rectangular bag is crafted in calfskin with a subtle sheen and an exceptionally supple hand that gives it a lived-in patina. It is designed to be worn open, its zip-top collapsing into a slouched silhouette, revealing a new logo pared down from four interlocking Ls to two. For McCollough and Hernandez, this balance of reverence and irreverence defines their vision for Loewe.
As the world’s second-oldest luxury fashion house, preceded only by Hermès, Loewe has a long history of playful experimentation. In 1846, a collective of leather artisans formed a small workshop on Calle del Lobo (now Calle de Echegaray) in Madrid’s Barrio de las Letras. They created leather vanity kits and travel cases, as well as more whimsical commissioned objects, such as a tooth fairy box topped with a silver mouse. In 1872, German businessman Enrique Loewe Roessberg joined forces with the collective under the name E. Loewe, combining his technical precision with the artisans’ creativity and inimitable leatherworking skills. The house became an official supplier to the Spanish crown in 1905, and by the 1950s it attracted a different kind of royalty. Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich, and Sophia Loren were among the Hollywood stars who visited Loewe’s Gran Vía flagship while filming in Spain. Ava Gardner acquired a chocolate-brown crocodile handbag there, said to have been a gift from Ernest Hemingway.
Julia Garner, True Whitaker and Sara Pidgeon carry Loewe’s Amazona.
In the 1970s, Loewe began collaborating with a new generation of designers, including Karl Lagerfeld and Giorgio Armani. Designed by Dario Rossi and named for the warrior women of Greek mythology, the Amazona was introduced in 1975. Crafted in gold suede, it arrived amid a global shift as more women entered the workforce, and was conceived as a softened briefcase without a rigid base, allowing it to slouch naturally. Reinforced leather handles and protective corner detailing added durability, while the Vincent Vela-designed Anagram and mini-padlock with key anchored its visual identity. A commercial success long before the era of the It bag, the Amazona quickly became a brand signature. In the 21st century, the Amazona has reappeared in a number of seasonal collections, including Stuart Vevers’s pristine white version for resort 2009 and Jonathan Anderson’s smaller square iteration for fall 2021, and has been carried by the likes of Kate Moss and Madonna.
Sarah Jessica Parker, Madonna, and Kate Moss with previous iterations of Loewe’s Amazona.
The Amazona 180 anchors a special lion-themed anniversary capsule collection made in collaboration with the artist David Shrigley, known for his humorous, deliberately naïve drawings of animals. The featured creature is a nod to the house name: Loewe is the umlaut-free spelling of the German word for lion, löwe, reimagined here as something closer to the loveably neurotic feline from The Wizard of Oz than a heraldic emblem. Sweet muzzles peek from the interior in place of the logo, while rounded leather ears emerge from the base of the handle. Elsewhere, Shrigley’s character appears in beaded embroidery and leather intarsia across Loewe icons, including the Flamenco pouch with its gathered pleats (launched in the 1980s), the tetradecahedron Puzzle bag (2015), the modular Hammock Flip bag (2025), and the Cala sling bag introduced as part of the Paula’s Ibiza collection in April, extending the motif across the house’s archive in a playful register. Shop the collection at loewe.com and in Loewe stores now.
Top image, left, clockwise from top: Courtesy of Loewe (2); Getty Images; Courtesy of Loewe (2).
