This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free.

A couple of days before their fall 2026 runway show for Loewe, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez were shopping their own collection. “I want these for myself,” Hernandez said, grabbing a flat, rubber-toed, slip-on sneaker that looked like a cross between an aquasock and a climbing shoe. Examining a shelf of handbags in a rainbow of suedes in their bright Paris design studio, Hernandez picked up a delightfully rounded black nubuck briefcase. “I’m getting this one,” he added. “Good! Because I got the brown,” McCollough replied.

This was a new and thrilling experience for the creative and life partners, who have been making clothes for women since 2002, when they launched their beloved NYC-based label, Proenza Schouler. But until the duo joined the LVMH-owned Spanish luxury house last year following Jonathan Anderson’s move to Dior, they had never before done menswear. “For selfish reasons, we’re very excited,” McCollough joked as Hernandez pulled on a bomber jacket that bloomed with three hoods layered on top of one another that resembled an abstract sculpture of fuzzy shearling and gingham check. The fit? Perfect.

The designers pulled out several other pieces of playful outerwear that exemplify the bright spirit they’re bringing to Loewe: a leather parka that inflates like a life vest; a check bomber in a blousy, cropped silhouette they referred to as a “mushroom fit”; an overcoat made of “really technological” fabric that was woven and embroidered with flossy yarn until it resembled a cascade of brown ostrich feathers; a hoodie molded from seamless sky blue leather.

Loewe fall 2026

Molly SJ Lowe / Courtesy of Loewe

Molly SJ Lowe / Courtesy of Loewe

This season has given us plenty of serious, cinematic menswear, as if guys universally aspire to look like they stepped out of a French film noir. But the two newcomers have provided a compelling counterargument with a bizarro vision that is funky and tactile, that ignites the imagination and brings out your inner eccentric. Moving down the racks, the designers gleefully jiggled a tiny pajama top made of rubber that seems destined for Harry Styles’s wardrobe. “It’s a little pervy,” McCollough said with a sly wink. “There’s a preppy, dorky vibe which we love, but done in a completely demented way,” Hernandez added.

Perhaps because they have been inseparable since 1998, when the two Parsons students met at a nightclub in New York, McCollough and Hernandez are widely referred to in fashion as “the boys.” Now they are the “Loewe boys.” And they do have a boyish energy, as if they wouldn’t be able to sit still even if they actually had the time to do so. At one point, they were surprised to hear that their sticky, sexy Loewe campaign by Talia Chetrit was plastered all over Paris, because they’ve been so wrapped up in the seven collections they’re working on at the same time. “We basically live here,” Hernandez said, referring to the design studio.