Luxury produce

Walden Green on heirloom chic.

“Remember Sam Taylor-Wood’s dying fruit? Things rot….I used flowers because they die. My mood was darkly romantic at the time.” —Alexander McQueen, Savage Beauty

Tomato season in New Jersey doesn’t peak until mid-July, except this year, when my feed had an early go at things. It started with this tweet at the beginning of the month, now sitting at a comfortable 38K likes: “look at this tomato I got.” The tomato in question was striking—taut, vesicular, practically oiled up like one of those Edward Weston pepper photographs—but it took another poster to kick things into high gear. On June third, “This tomato is so Loewe I can’t explain it”; then, three days later, creative director Jonathan Anderson announced that Loewe was doing an heirloom tomato clutch. A perfect coincidence if there ever was one.

In a quote to the Washington Post’s fashion correspondent Rachel Tashjian, Anderson said “we had already made it for next season lol,” but it still vindicated the eighty-nine thousand or so (minus the bots) who’d resonated with the original tomato’s Loewe-ness. But why? What can a fruit and a luxury fashion house possibly have in common?

For one, this isn’t Loewe’s first time playing in the Solanum lycopersicum design space. Last year, they released a tomato candle, a 72-ounce version of which will run you just under $500 and, Harper’s Bazaar promises, will capture “the essence of picking a tomato straight off the vine at 3:00 p.m. in a sunny, secluded garden.” Whatever’s going on here, though, is far bigger than just one industry brand or “industry plant.”

A major trend in haute couture of the moment is trompe l’oeil, French for “to deceive the eye.” Originally, it refers to the creation of an illusory third dimension within a two-dimensional work of art, but nowadays, usage of the term is a bit more liberal. The original iteration of Michelin-starred restaurant Alinea had a now-infamous dish consisting of a tomato that looked like a strawberry and a strawberry that looked like a tomato. As well as a trompe l’oeil, it might also be considered a trompe la langue…a trick of the tongue.

“I think Jean Paul Gaultier is the king of trompe l’oeil—it's all over his 2010s output,” Says Savannah Eden Bradley, editor-in-chief of HALOSCOPE. “He's always been quite cautious about fashion as not just a reflection of our world but a form of sight itself. Despite having completely diametrical design approaches, Jonathan Anderson has a similar studio temperament. He likes pretty things, but he's prudent when it comes to the nitty gritty.”

The original tomato-post comprised two photos. In the first, a glossy sheen made it look globular and alien, yet highly precise, not unlike one of the creations of digital fashion house DRAUP. When the tomato is cut in half, it becomes just a tomato, fleshy, its curves and divots spontaneous in a nature-generated way rather than a computer-generated way. In 2024, this is also a Loewe tomato.

As a concept, the modern luxury brand has only existed for around 200 years, since Thierry Hermès pivoted from his family’s appointment as France’s royal saddlemakers to serving other nobles of the realm. Being built to last is, theoretically, built into the product (and the price). But as of late, Gucci, Chanel, and Balenciaga, to name a few, have suffered overexposure and lowered quality control, while the leather houses—Bottega Veneta, Hermès, Loewe—have accrued cultural capital through their commitment to craft and association with “quiet luxury.”

However, there are those fashion auteurs who pointedly choose entropy in their work. I am reminded of Alexander McQueen’s dresses made of real wilting flowers or razor clam shells, and Daniel Rosebury’s insane mother of pearl-encrusted bodice. This year, Jonathan Anderson was a guest curator at the Met Costume Institute’s “Spring Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” exhibition, and one of his contributions was a jacket from Loewe’s SS 2022 menswear collection: navy blue wool with real grass growing out of it, which would wilt and eventually die as the exhibit progressed. Leather itself is a limited resource. It comes from an animal, and will take between 10 and 50 years to degrade in a landfill, as opposed to polyester’s 20 to 200.

@loewe

Our SS23 grass coat grown specially for @The Met’s spring 2024 Costume Institute exhibition, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion. 💚

So high fashion can express permanence and it can express impermanence. Perhaps that’s why “everything is food now” (Barilla pasta purse included), why “farm stand chic” was a trend last fall, why UNDERCOVER made a baguette bag and Bottega a fish clutch. Not to mention the actual food brands that have embraced recession chic. We’re living amidst a tinned fish revival where Graza’s reusable olive oil bottles (would be yummy on a Loewe tomato tbh) regularly sell out in stores. As climate change lowers crop yields and lessens the number of productive fish species in the sea, some foods will enter the “luxury” category for the first time.

I grew up in the Hudson River Valley, where there was a farm stand practically every mile marker. Now, when I visit my stepmother in Brooklyn, we go to the Prospect Park Greenmarket on Saturday mornings. They have a Bread Alone stand, which I’m always surprised to see because I knew Bread Alone from upstate and never thought they were especially good. 

I watch people walk around putting heirloom vegetables into their BAGGUs, and they’re not just telegraphing something about the produce they buy, or the food they eat; it’s a statement about the kind of lifestyle they live, or perhaps aspire to live. Much like the tomato candle, a certain kind of tomato has become a status symbol in its own right. And the Loewe tomato is much closer to one of those luxuriously imperfect heirloom sunbursts than it is to a standard supermarket globe.  

The natural and artificial exist on a horseshoe; go far enough in either direction, and things fall apart. The stem cannot hold. A SHEIN top that comes apart in the wash and a jacket made of grass. On one end, a snowflake, and on the other, one of those periodic table elements that can only be made in a lab and even then exists for a blink.

Heirloom produce is heirloom because it’s not genetically engineered to be grown at scale. Scarcity creates exclusivity. “That's why everyone drooled over the Loewe tomato—it's beautiful and thoughtful. You don't see much of the latter anymore,” Savannah says. As nature—primal, raw, unengineered nature—becomes itself more scarce, it also becomes more chic; of course everybody wants a taste. 🍅