Which artist created the dog and whale for Loewe’s Fall/Winter 2026 show?

Loewe has a reputation for working with cutting-edge contemporary artists under creative director Jonathan Anderson, who left the fashion house to join Dior last year. But judging from Loewe’s fall/winter 2026 collection, which debuted during Paris Fashion Week on Friday, it seems these collaborations are still a core part of Loewe’s ethos.

Sculptor Cosima von Bonin was the artist chosen this time. In addition to designs by Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the show featured stuffed whales, clams, crabs and other sea creatures that sat on low pedestals among event attendees, who included rapper Lil Yachty, actresses Aubrey Plaza and Sissy Spacek, and former cast members. Fashion Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour.

While on the show, she also sculpted dogs that appear alongside all the sea creatures for a new series called “The Beaux.” The dogs vaguely remembered the haunting name of her 2024 investigation in Mudam, Luxembourg: “The Song of the Gay Dog.”

Von Bonin, who was born in Kenya and now lives in Germany, is beloved for his sculptures of marine animals. The main exhibition at the 2022 Venice Biennale, for example, features her plastic sculptures of sharks and fish atop the show’s central pavilion, which, for some reason, is adorned with an electric guitar. The grounds surrounding the nearby pavilion feature a sculpture of a dolphin on a motorboat.

What do those sculptures mean? Don’t ask von Bonin. “First of all, I never explain my work,” she told critic Eleanor Heartney in a 2018 interview with The New York Times Brooklyn Railroad.

However, critic Jason Farago, in a review for Sculpture Center New York, described von Bonin’s 2016 survey at Sculpture Center New York this way. new york times: “The ocean theme is somewhat arbitrary, but that’s half the point. The combination of all this dank stuff, sometimes mean-spirited, sometimes hilarious, makes the show owe a debt not just to Finding Nemo but to Manet, Whistler and other artists who turned to the ocean.”

McCullough and Hernandez said in a statement: “The humor, lightness, lightness, and inclusive spirit — qualities we believe are intrinsic to LOEWE’s Spanish heritage — led us to the work of Cosima von Bonin, an artist we have long admired and with whom we recently had the pleasure of spending time. Her work reflects many of the ideas we seek to express and embody in material form.”