“What shapes you as a kid… it’s like Michael Johnson, around the curve on the 200, chains bouncing – it wasn’t really about the Olympics or anything – he was just himself in that moment, and the self-expression in that was life-changing for me.”

Ahead of Loewe‘s FW20 show, US footballer and star of the brand’s recent men’s campaign Megan Rapinoe shares the formative moments that have fuelled her own activism. Watching the event as a child, it was Johnson’s legendary feat at the 1996 Olympics, breaking both 200m and 400m records, that helped drive Rapinoe to achieve her own personal glory with the national US women’s football team in 2019.

From the moment she and her teammates were crowned world champions, Rapinoe has become a leading voice in the fight against bigotry and discrimination, particularly towards the LGBTQ+ community, of which she is a member. For Loewe, Rapinoe addresses the viewer directly, encouraging people to pursue change, however small. “It doesn’t have to be this abstract, big thing where you have to change the world all at one time, it’s not possible… it will never be the way perfectly we want it to be, but it can be better.”

Alongside images from the latest collaborative instalment between the ménage à trois of Loewe’s creative director Jonathan Anderson, photographer Steven Meisel and creative studio M/M Paris, Rapinoe’s soundbites have been recorded onto vinyl that will double as an invitation to the show in Paris.