Is it possible to be in love with a leather swatch? I wouldn’t have thought so, but on this hot June day in Paris, Lazaro Hernandez is gazing at one with such ardor, I’m revisiting the assumption. “It looks painted, right? Like watercolor—or Rothko, the way the colors bleed into each other…. But it’s not, look, it’s layers of leather—the technique’s old, it’s called skiving, but this is a new way of doing it….” Hernandez carries on in this vein, like a friend breathlessly reporting back on a fantastic first date. Meanwhile, Jack McCollough, Hernandez’s partner in work and life, is road testing a bucket bag in the mirror (“How’s this slouch?”) as members of the Loewe design team look on.

In January, Hernandez and McCollough announced that they were stepping down from Proenza Schouler, th

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