​C​eramic​ pots​ rotating on record players​ and s​pinning car-wash brushes​ greeted guests at the Loewe show at Paris fashion week, as the Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson continued to explore the relationship between contemporary art and 21st-century fashion.

As with many shows this season, the focus was on “the experience” as well as the clothes shown on the catwalk. Staged at the Unesco building on Friday morning, guests entered through a recreated facade of the 1960s London gallery Signals, a space Anderson came across during his research and which specialised in experimental art.

Inside, the show space housed several art installations – including woven baskets by Joe Hogan, the first winner of the craft prize Anderson set up at Loewe in 2016. It proved an apt setting for Anderson’s aim of exploring artistic individuality, part of his continuous quest to feed more “craft” into the brand.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Long leather kaftan dresses emphasised the label’s leather heritage. Photograph: Peter White/Getty Images

“​​I wanted ​[to show] people were walking through the space as individual​s​ but they have ​this common thread ​[which] is about enjoying the idea of making things and experimenting​,” Anderson said, explaining he enjoyed the freedom of experimentation to see where it took him. For spring/summer 2019, he applied this mindset not only to his collection but also to his approach. Rather than obsess over “the lineup” and how one look correlates to the next as with most designers’ work, he enjoyed studying how “individual looks work in terms of a fashion context”.

The clothes reflected his strategy. Long leather kaftan dresses mingled with utilitarian shorts and jackets; layers of lambskin suede were soon followed by fresh white sundresses in poplin and broderie anglais; tailored liquid-satin trousers and wool jumpers were contrasted with crinkled, waffled jacquard trousers and tops; and accessories ranged from whipcord collars to ostrich feather earrings. The last was different to the next, yet Anderson’s gift is that even when creating a series of individual looks, ​the mood he imbues on everything keeps it cohesive and covetable.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bags were worn over the shoulder, like this crochet crossbody style. Photograph: WWD/Rex/Shutterstock

These looks were styled the way Anderson’s exhibition-frequenting muse would wear them: with ​bags slung around their bodies​. Sometimes ​bags were layered over bags –​ ​a reminder from Anderson, he said backstage, that Loewe was first and foremost a leather house. However, his new styles came in basket and crochet crossbody form, although destined to be worn with the brand’s bestselling Puzzle and Gate leather counterparts.

Anderson’s ​USP is that he can create ​collections ​that​ compellingly tread the ​line between ​the ​conceptual and wearable.​ ​Under ​his​ ​creative ​direction, Loewe has become one of ​the​ most dynamic houses in the fashion portfolio of its ​owner, LVMH, which ​in the first quarter of 2018 reported organic growth of 16% in its fashion and leather goods division.

​Later in the day, Balmain’s long-term creative director, Olivier Rousteing, was, in his words, also enjoying “pushing envelopes and thinking outside the box”. The designer, like Anderson, prizes craft, although in his case it is the craft of couture techniques.

Ambition and technique merged together in this collection, where he looked to celebrate his native Paris and its many structures commemorating Napoleon’s campaigns in Egypt, but in the form of silhouettes and outfits his generation wants to wear now.

This played out in his signature super-short mini dresses and strong-shouldered suiting, which were embellished in shards of broken mirror and plexiglass intended to reference obelisks and pyramids. More obviously the stimulus could be seen in hieroglyphics printed on knitwear and raw-edged bandage dresses that encased models’ bodies as if mummified. To counter the couture there was also a scuba sweater featuring an image of a pharaoh and a strong line of modern denim. “I didn’t want to forget that we are in Paris,” said Rousteing. “This is a mix of what is Paris today with its history.”