8 weird and wonderful things to love from JW Anderson’s relaunch

Fancy a JW Anderson Irish linen tea towel? Or a limited-edition Jasperware Lucie Rie tea cup and saucer, reissued by Wedgwood? Good news: Jonathan Anderson is expanding his own-name fashion business to include a lifestyle proposition – and it’s not just common-or-garden scented candles. 

Hot on the heels of his debut as creative director across menswear and womenswear at Dior, Anderson’s relaunched brand will now take in a curated edit of handmade Windsor chairs and vintage 19th-century copper watering cans, honey from Houghton Hall and hand-forged, made-in-Leicester carbon-steel nails; these will sit among the suede Loafer handbags and sequinned minidresses that have become brand staples. “I wanted to create a library for people,” Anderson said at a preview in Paris on 7 July. “For the past 11 years I’ve been consolidating: craft meets art meets making meets finding. These are all people I have known, or people I have worked with, or people that I buy things from myself.”  

Launching on 1 September, the collection will span around 560 items, many personally sourced by Anderson. Some will be vintage one-offs, such as the 19th-century silver port decanter labels; others, such as the Lucie Rie cups, taken from an archive drawing and made in Stoke-on-Trent, will be available in a limited edition of 100. Around 200 items will comprise carry-over designs, presented alongside the ready-to-wear and accessories.  

They’re kind of affluent, historical, but sexy in a weird way

It’s all part of Anderson’s plan to transform JW Anderson, in which LVMH has held a minority stake since 2013, into “a modern-day cabinet of curiosities”, as he puts it. “I like this idea that you can buy this” – he gestures at a 1992 oil of an acidic-green pear by American painter Robert Kulicke – “and it has the same value as this” – he points at a chartreuse velvet evening dress hanging next to it. “It’s all about atomising values.” As part of the revamp, the stores will be redesigned, lined with Rose Uniacke velvet and hung with Shaker-style hooks. One new store will even open in late 2025 opposite Uniacke’s flagship on Pimlico Road, London’s design district since the 1960s. 

Anderson’s personal favourite? A pair of damask-silk shorts made in Britain by the same mill that supplies Chippendale, with a florid pattern that lines the walls at Dumfries House in Scotland. “They’re expensive, but they’re beautiful. They’re kind of affluent, historical, but sexy in a weird way. I would have them in every colour,” he says. Here is HTSI’s edit of the weirdest and most wonderful items from the collection. 

Antique wine decanter labels, from £300

It’s time to develop a taste for port, if only in service of the 19th-century silver bat label to hang around your (cut-crystal) decanter. “I love decanter labels,” says Anderson, who sourced the silver exemplars from auctions. “To make these today would be impossible, they’d be so expensive. There’s something so aristocratic about them. The bat one is fantastic.”

Honey from Norfolk’s Houghton Hall estate, £25 

Norfolk’s Houghton Hall estate is home not only to Anderson’s friends David Cholmondeley, the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley, his wife Lady Rose Hanbury and their children, but to several beehives. “I spend most of my spare time up in Norfolk, and Houghton is one of my favourite houses,” says Anderson. “I’ve always wanted to make honey. So I worked with them on a batch.” Just 100 jars per year will be available, printed with the name of the beekeeper and their lids wrapped in linen swatches handwoven on a traditional 18th-century loom by London-based weaver Max Mosscrop.

Antique gardening tools, from £90

Presented in collaboration with Garden & Wood, the Wiltshire-based antique tool business, this selection of gardening paraphernalia curated by Anderson is discreetly branded with his brand’s logo. “They’ve been restored to protect the original patina,” he says. 

Ernest Wright embroidery scissors, £180  

Made in Sheffield by Ernest Wright, purveyor of handmade scissors and shears since 1902, these engraved embroidery scissors are made from midcentury carbon-steel stork forgings requisitioned from a German forge.

Hand-forged nails, £50 for three

Forget shellac. The nail of the season is 13cm long, rose head-topped, made of waxed and patinated carbon-steel, engraved with the JW Anderson logo and forged by hand in Leicester. “We used them during the pandemic when we did the show in the box, and we worked with this amazing blacksmith. So I was like, let’s make a coat hook. They’re sold in a box of three,” says Anderson.

Lucie Rie mugs, £990

Anderson has amassed a museum-quality collection of 100 pieces of Lucie Rie pottery over a 15-year period – as well as the 1964 correspondence showing that Wedgwood declined to produce her designs when she proposed a collaboration. Anderson persuaded the company to right this past wrong; now among his favourite pieces in the collection are two Jasperware tea cups and saucers reproduced from her archive. “This was two years in the making but they are exactly as she wanted them. It will be to raise money for young potters and fund the catalogue raisonné of her work.” 

Handmade Windsor chairs, £3,700 each

Take your pick from the multi-tiered Wedding Cake armchair to the cocooning Lobster Pot style, each handmade in Lewes, East Sussex by Jason Mosseri from locally felled ash, oak, beech or cherry. “I was looking at things that we have in Britain that are becoming endangered in terms of how we make things. Stick chairs for example, there are not many people that know how to make them. [Mosseri] only usually makes about two to three chairs a year, so we will have 20 or 30 of them available for this next 24-month period,” says the designer. 

Yard-O-Led mechanical pencil, £600

Made of sterling silver to a traditional Victorian design by Yard-O-Led, the historic pen-maker with a 200-year-old history in Birmingham, JW Anderson’s mechanical pencil, ballpoint pen and fountain pen come engraved with the designer’s favourite Oscar Wilde inscription: “The secret of life is in art.”