Loewe

Loewe is a Spanish luxury house founded in Madrid in 1846, today owned by the French group LVMH. It began as a leather workshop and is widely described as one of the oldest surviving European fashion houses [2]. Alongside its leather goods and ready-to-wear, Loewe runs a long-established perfume division, Perfumes Loewe, whose fragrances and home scents are the brand's footprint in beauty.

The house remains fully active and global. In 2026 it marked its 180th anniversary with a capsule collection of reissued leather designs [1], and its home-fragrance line continued to expand with new releases as recently as 2024.

Most sources place Loewe's founding in 1846, when a group of Spanish leather craftsmen opened a workshop in central Madrid. The house takes its name from a later figure: the German leather craftsman Enrique Loewe Roessberg, who joined the workshop and gave it his surname. The exact year of his arrival is recorded inconsistently — some accounts date it to 1872, while Wikipedia's entry uses 1876 [2].

The two dates are sometimes conflated into a single founding year. One beauty editorial credits the 1846 founding directly to "Enrique Loewe Roessberg" [3], whereas the broader consensus treats 1846 as the date the craft collective began and the 1870s as when the Loewe name attached to it [2]. The house itself frames its identity around continuous leather craft from 1846 onward.

Loewe built its early reputation in fine leather. In 1905 it was appointed a purveyor to the Spanish royal court under King Alfonso XIII, a warrant granted to the second-generation owner Enrique Loewe y Hinton [2].

The brand entered beauty in 1972 with its first perfume, L de Loewe, a chypre floral for women [3]. According to editorial accounts, the scent was first sold only in the house's own boutiques; its success prompted Loewe to invest in international perfume retail. A first men's fragrance, Loewe pour Homme, followed in 1974, and 1985's Aire Loewe became a long-running bestseller on the Spanish market.

The fashion side gained international momentum from the late 1990s, when Narciso Rodriguez became creative director (1997–2000) and the house staged its first Paris runway show in 1998. A later creative revival arrived under Jonathan Anderson, creative director from 2013 to 2025, whose tenure coincided with Loewe topping Lyst's Hottest Brand Index for the first time in the second quarter of 2023 [2]. The brand's beauty output expanded in parallel: in 2016 Anderson worked with in-house perfumer Emilio Valeros on the paired 001 Woman and 001 Man fragrances, and in 2020 the house launched LOEWE Home Scents, a collection of plant-inspired candles and diffusers developed with in-house perfumer Nuria Cruelles.

Loewe is part of LVMH. The group first acquired the rights to Loewe's international distribution in 1986, then took full ownership of the company in 1996 [2]. Within LVMH, Perfumes Loewe sits in the Perfumes and Cosmetics division alongside houses such as Guerlain, Acqua di Parma, Dior and Givenchy. Reported revenue for the wider house reached €626 million in 2022 [2].

Loewe positions itself as a craft-led luxury house rooted in Spanish heritage. On its history pages the company describes a journey "defined by an obsessive focus on craft and unmatched expertise with leather" [8]. Its perfume arm leans on a Spanish identity: Perfumes Loewe states that its fragrances "echo the passionate and sensual image of Spain" and presents itself as preserving an artisanal heritage while pursuing innovation.

The fragrances are frequently framed in editorial coverage as fashion-insider or quiet-luxury scents. One beauty publication describes Loewe's "minimalistic aesthetic and artisanal craftsmanship" and notes its Un Paseo por Madrid line recurring on stylish vanities as a status marker [3].

The perfume catalogue spans several scent families, including the 001 line, the solar Un Paseo por Madrid collection, the lightweight Aire range, Esencia, Earth and Solo. Esencia is described by the brand as a robust composition built from more than two hundred elements, among them red pepper berries, basil and tarragon.

The 2020 LOEWE Home Scents collection extended the house into home fragrance with eleven plant-inspired scents — including honeysuckle, juniper berry, tomato leaves and coriander — across candles, diffusers, soaps and room sprays. Cruelles has said the line aimed to recreate plant smells as faithfully as possible, and that Anderson wanted to "preserve the raw essence of the plants in each candle and product, enhancing them without any kind of flourish." The Tomato Leaves candle became the line's most widely covered object, and two further scents, Mushroom and Roasted Hazelnut, were added in February 2024.

In 2024 the beauty title Who What Wear ranked Loewe's fragrances among the "elite," singling out the brand's aesthetic and craftsmanship [3]. The Home Scents collection drew dedicated editorial coverage, including an AnOther Magazine interview with Cruelles on its development with Anderson.

Loewe is active and operating globally as a major LVMH house. Its most recent visible activity includes the 2026 capsule collection marking 180 years since its 1846 founding [1] and the February 2024 additions to its home-fragrance line. Creative direction passed to Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez in 2025 [2].