Snippiness is (famously) baked into the fashion biz: get a bunch of creative types in a room together and there’s bound to be some private squabbling. Occasionally, the chafing is made public, like when Virgil Abloh addressed Diet Prada’s quips and Karl Lagerfeld gave a particularly DGAF interview late in life. Social media has made it especially easy for a few of these private thoughts to become public in the heat of the moment, which is where Jonathon Anderson comes in.
The eponymous founder of JW Anderson and LOEWE creative director is a pretty private individual. Anderson famously prefers low-key clothing over fancy fare and enjoys spending time at museums instead of hobnobby industry gatherings but sometimes you’ve just to get something off your chest. Early on July 13, he posted some Instagram Stories addressing a recent Financial Times article, taking particular umbrage with one line.
Please decipher? pic.twitter.com/XxTPHPdas2
— bryanboy (@bryanboy) July 13, 2021
Turns out, Phoebe Philo has nothing — and yet everything — to do with it. News of her return to fashion reverberated throughout the media sphere, most write-ups touched on her design legacy and ruminated future endeavors. The Financial Times took a more meta approach, speaking to LVMH ‘s history of funding indie designers (it will partially bankroll Philo’s new label and owns LOEWE).
“LVMH’s investments in young brands have rarely borne fruit — in February it said that it was winding down Rihanna’s fashion line just 18 months after launch, while its minority investments in JW Anderson and Nicholas Kirkwood, have not been successful,” said FT’s Fashion Editor, Lauren Indvik. Seems innocuous enough, given that Indvik presumably meant that LVMH’s investments, rather than JWA, have been unsuccessful. Nonetheless, Anderson was incensed, though he not enough to respond to Highsnobiety’s request for comment.
Oh wow pic.twitter.com/5Wi1caByZD
— bryanboy (@bryanboy) July 13, 2021
A series of irritable screengrabs of his guest-edited FT How To Spend It “Hope Issue” appeared on Anderson’s IG Stories, calling out Indvik and FT over the perceived slight. “If I am not a success, then why do an issue together,” he asked. “What was the point?” Anderson also angrily hashtagged #nohope in reference to his FT issue.
The Stories have since been deleted and replaced with reposts of his Persol eyewear collab. Perhaps Anderson got in touch with Indvik and fellow editor Jo Ellison, who he tagged in his stories, to straighten things out. The inciting article hasn’t been edited, though, so who’s to say?