Astrid Andersen (Q3777)
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Astrid Andersen is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Astrid Andersen |
Astrid Andersen is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Fashion-wise, Newton’s Third Law no longer applies: The long-evolved physics of cyclical collections, wholesale retail, and consumer desire has been rudely upended by larger forces of the universe. Which leaves a designer as thoughtful and prescient as Astrid Andersen entirely reconsidering her actions. As she explained down the phone from Copenhagen: “The starting point for the collection was to ask, ‘Should you even do one?’ You know, is it really relevant right now? Is the market there? What’s happening? That was such a different starting point in itself, that the process came from that. So there was a certain level of escapism in it; it’s definitely not meant for just sitting at home being quiet.”Andersen said she wanted to return in some respects to her origins, which she did in terms of both silhouette and sumptuousness. However her earliest basketball/fur/lace equation was succeeded by more various elements, less rigidly applied. Shot in the domed dining space of chef Rasmus Munk’s technologically decadent restaurantAlchemist, Andersen’s collection blends Aloha shirts, mesh baseball shirts, zebra-stripe jacquard, check flannel, one regally two-toned fur piece, and garment dyed jersey and denim.In a few looks, she tellingly upended her usual mania for symmetry’s harmony by splicing print with a collegiate shirt or cutting a shades-of-gray check garment into a shirt-gown hybrid. “I love when things match up, usually. This was the first time for me to really try and break that up. And so this was supposed to look more, not random, but spontaneous. You know, not everything is supposed to look correct.” What does correct even mean, anyway? Andersen’s shifted juxtapositions reflected a moment in which the rules of desire are in such flux that the only law worth observing is your own intuition.
16 April 2021
Fashion-wise, Newton’s Third Law no longer applies: The long-evolved physics of cyclical collections, wholesale retail, and consumer desire has been rudely upended by larger forces of the universe. Which leaves a designer as thoughtful and prescient as Astrid Andersen entirely reconsidering her actions. As she explained down the phone from Copenhagen: “The starting point for the collection was to ask, ‘Should you even do one?’ You know, is it really relevant right now? Is the market there? What’s happening? That was such a different starting point in itself, that the process came from that. So there was a certain level of escapism in it; it’s definitely not meant for just sitting at home being quiet.”Andersen said she wanted to return in some respects to her origins, which she did in terms of both silhouette and sumptuousness. However her earliest basketball/fur/lace equation was succeeded by more various elements, less rigidly applied. Shot in the domed dining space of chef Rasmus Munk’s technologically decadent restaurantAlchemist, Andersen’s collection blends Aloha shirts, mesh baseball shirts, zebra-stripe jacquard, check flannel, one regally two-toned fur piece, and garment dyed jersey and denim.In a few looks, she tellingly upended her usual mania for symmetry’s harmony by splicing print with a collegiate shirt or cutting a shades-of-gray check garment into a shirt-gown hybrid. “I love when things match up, usually. This was the first time for me to really try and break that up. And so this was supposed to look more, not random, but spontaneous. You know, not everything is supposed to look correct.” What does correct even mean, anyway? Andersen’s shifted juxtapositions reflected a moment in which the rules of desire are in such flux that the only law worth observing is your own intuition.
16 April 2021
It’s been 10 years since Astrid Andersen launched her namesake label; in the time since, the menswear landscape has undergone an unrecognizable shift. And while Andersen’s luxurious vision of streetwear may have filtered its way up to the biggest houses in Paris, in response, she’s spent the past few seasons moving away from her earlier, flashier instincts and into increasingly personal territory.Last season, that meant a modest showroom in New York, where her signature oversized hoodies and graphic tracksuits were re-created in meticulously handcrafted layers of organza. This time around, returning to her usual base in London, she went (very literally) closer to home. Looking back to her mother’s ’70s rose-print sofa, Andersen noted that for her, it represents a specific moment of liberal upswell in her native country of Denmark.The print came filtered through a psychedelic lens, reworked and ready for a second summer (or, in this case, fall) of love. Other nods to the ’70s came by way of tasseled ponchos and flares, interpolated with her usual riffs on sportswear staples. The soundtrack, meanwhile, zigzagged between hip-hop and Pink Floyd—the overall vibe was a kind of hypebeast Woodstock.Despite it being one of Andersen’s signatures, a jarring note came via the collection’s heavy use of fur. Andersen has noted in the past, as she did again this season, that real fur is more sustainable than faux. But floor-length fur coats are hardly a menswear staple—surely the easy answer would be just not to use it at all?Where Andersen felt more in sync with her peers was in the overall spirit of the collection, which was shot through with a sense of optimism. In place of her previous affinity for flamboyance and bombast, the attitude here felt looser, and more free-spirited. After a decade in the business, the opening of a new chapter feels perfectly timed.
5 January 2020
Before streetwear was a billion-dollar business buzzword there was Astrid Anderson, who built her label adapting her American sport obsessions into oversize and graphic-laden menswear. Now that her aesthetic has become the norm, Andersen is stepping back and reevaluating her signatures, repositioning her brand within the oversaturated street market. What she’s come up with over the past couple of seasons is a slower, more sentimental approach to her clothing. It’s at its best for Spring 2020, which might come as a surprise considering she is not showing on the runway, as she has for the past five years, nor is she showing in her adopted fashion homeland of London Fashion Week Men’s. Instead Andersen held press previews for her Spring 2020 collection in stylist Simon Rasmussen’s studio on New York’s Canal Street, where an Australian shepherd milled about as photographers and assistants prepped the lookbook shoot.There, Andersen showed off a concise two racks of menswear that honed in on her brand DNA. It was tightly edited, in a sand and sky palette, offering one or two ur-options of her key pieces. Her graphic jersey, for example, is upgraded in a silky tone-on-tone leopard print, while tracksuits and basketball shorts are in nylon or trimmed with seam tape for a more technical feel. To amplify her less-but-better message, Andersen created several of her go-to silhouettes, from anoraks to cargo pants, in organza. Each piece is entirely made by hand, with her and her studio team dying the thread and fabric over and over again until they hit the perfect shade of Dutch blue. These organza pieces are near couture grade, lovingly labored over with a bit of built-in soul. It’s a smart move for the designer: As everyone gets to her level, she’s leveling up.
7 June 2019
This was very different from Astrid Andersen. Yes, it was hype, but was also . . .hygge. Plus, maybe it was the wide-brimmed hats (hand-shaped in Copenhagen by Hornskov) and the tailoring influence that was her starting point, but it also had a faint but discernible flavor of Ray Petri/Felix Howard. A hint of Buffalo leftover from previous collections but becoming fundamental.Andersen’s key ingredients—discombobulating lace insertions played against streetwear shapes, something she pioneered a decade ago and the wider hype-y, follow-me world has since seized upon—were there. But in the cable-knit paneled tracksuits, the hand-painted print outerwear, the rib-knit kinetically bonded patchwork undies—was an interesting dig into the organic and a turn away from the synthetic. Andersen is a roaring supporter of traceable but totally used-to-scamper animal fur, made in collaboration with Saga; only here its usual big-pimpin’ extravagance was tempered by the informality of the garments beneath. Also vaguely shocking—at least until you recalled that she will present her first collaborative collection with Fila in Florence next Thursday—was that instead of Nike, her models were shod in Dr. Martens.This was a transition collection, fascinating if you follow the hieroglyphics of the designer. For those who expect her to do one thing, and just that, it might have been a confusing topic-swerve. But it hinted at a creative development, a step forward, and a graduation. Also,hygge—much better than hype.
6 January 2019
Be careful what you wish for. In her preprepared press release, Astrid Andersen said she had dropped the runway show format this season because she wanted to do something a little bit different—to both challenge herself and her audience. Thus the idea was to present a live lookbook shoot, gonzo-style, and allow her invitees a four-hour window to watch it happen. The shoot was due to open at 11:30 a.m., but nope, doors shut. I played the Vogue Runway card (the best) and oozed in as the first model was asking whether he could wear his grimy yellow socks on set. Andersen, dashing about in a baseball djellaba and looking totally un-chilled, confessed, “Nobody knows what’s going on!”After a deep breath, a little moment, she added: “The idea is that the guests look at the research upstairs and then come down and watch the shoot, where we have worked to create this fantasy set. Assoonas these boys are dressed, I hope you will see that the concept is a sort of ’60s, ’70s space dreaming, that summer vacation vibe, with something that felt artificial and retro, like that UFO on set alongside that . . .”“Blatantly fake crocodile?”“Ha! Yeah! This season, we really focused on developing a smaller catwalk collection and developing our core pieces, to really get the tracksuitnailed down.” Those catwalk looks were led by wide-leg silver tracksuits with an embossed crocodile relief. Andersen said she had discovered albino crocodiles actually exist, and had become fixated by their twisted beauty. “It’s nature, but it looks artificial and so surreal.”By now, the model had been guided to remove the socks and Andersen’s stylist, the excellent but misguidedly Liverpool-supporting Elgar Johnson, was intently giving commands as a piece of aluminum foil was pressed into his face. Andersen’s staff were wanly urging photographers to get out of the way of the 360-degree live-feed camera (of course, there was a live feed). The photographers breezily riposted that you can’teverget out of the way of such a stupid camera—and that they were going to take their photographs, whatever, okay?Meanwhile, Andersen showed off her metallic bouclé tops with raw necklines and her Cardin-inspired armless jackets featuring de-centered zippers, plus taped tracksuits fabricated in a mix of raw Thai silk and high-shine orange nylon. It was a meld of the apparently artificial aligned with the apparently natural. They looked good.
Commercial-rack-wise, there were a series of sweats, some knit polos I had no idea Andersen does, plus tees featuring the unsettling scarlet eye of Andersen’s albino croc.As I headed out for the next thing, Andersen observed: “Hopefully, once it’s all done, the shoot will contain something similar, something a bit sinister.” Then, she swiveled back to her chaos in progress and sighed. Be careful what you wish for. Strong collection, though.
11 June 2018
Astrid Andersen’s Copenhagen women’s show was a continuation of the Buffalo-era menswear collection she presented in London in early January. Last month she toldVogue’s Luke Leitch that the Buffalo moment appealed to her because it was “about this open-mindedness, not thinking about race or gender or anything, breaking all boundaries.”Investigating the period, she wound up breaking some boundaries of her own. The hot-pink fur, metallic blue jacket, and yellow head-to-toe tartan here were striking for sure, and she deserves kudos for experimenting with new hues and patterns.However, on at least a few of the looks, there was a lot going on. Andersen’s mixed-and-matched prints and her layering techniques, while usually thoughtful and tidy, were at times a bit heavy-handed. But because it’s Andersen, the collection as a whole did give off a cool vibe. It was a more playful evolution for her and a little more feminine as well. This was especially true of the hoodie dresses and tees stamped with images of original Buffalo girl Jeny Howorth (her daughter Georgia walked in the show). The puffer jackets and vests were noteworthy too, which is saying a lot since those are two athleisure staples we’ve become more than accustomed to seeing on runways these days. That’s the thing about this designer: She makes clothes that challenge our preconceived perceptions of what sportswear, menswear, and womenswear are all supposed to look like.
2 February 2018
Fashion’s beating heart is transience, but when it chimes just right a fashion movement can span generations to become a permanent source of inspiration. Astrid Andersen was barely born when Buffalo began, but tonight the Danish designer looked lovingly back at the mid-’80s to the early-rave, Ray Petri–pioneered London style movement.Georgia Howorth wore Nike 270s, an Amazon-sourced Stetson, an Astrid logo T-shirt, plus a silk shirt and pants printed with a photo of her original vintage Buffalo model mother, Jeny, taken by Mark Lebon. There was a wild abandon of plaid-on-plaid oversize workwear/streetwear pieces, tracksuits and work shirts in iridescently rich jacquard weaves, hoodies and shawl-collar robe coats in nubbly teddy bear wool, and tracksuits inlaid with tweed panels, all of it consistent with the permissive eclecticism of back-in-the-day Buffalo, but identifiably Andersen, too. Her stylist, Elgar Johnson, puckered the pieces with colored crystal brooches to emphasize the anti-conventional toughness of a collection that incorporated skirts and sheer Sophie Hallette lace–inlaid T-shirts for men. A high-waisted gold-zippered black puffer gilet—a biker gilet?—and the incorporation of argyle were two new-feeling additions to the Andersen vocabulary that she had drawn from the old.So why look back to look forward? Andersen replied, “When I look at the Buffalo era it is about this open-mindedness, not thinking about race or gender or anything, breaking all boundaries.” That’s a slice of the ’80s that 2018 can most definitely make use of.
7 January 2018
Astrid Andersen is the Danish-born, London-based torchbearer for genuinely cool street and sportswear-inspired fashion. For her Spring 2018 women’s show yesterday, she chose a behemoth space inside an empty old factory. It looked like something Marc Jacobs might have chosen for a venue, which is to say that Andersen has an eye and marketing sense as sharp as any established name in the business. The presentation came on the heels of the announcement of a collaboration with rapper M.I.A. and another with Danish jewelry label Monies.Having launched womenswear for Fall 2017, Andersen’s second official go at lady clothes felt a tad more grown-up but with no less of an edge. She spent less time focused on her signature logo and more on fabric variation, whether it was denim, velvet, fur, leather, or a surprisingly traditional striped cotton poplin. The shirting was more sophisticated this time around, and a new butterfly- and floral-printed series brought a fresh feminine sensibility to her menswear-inspired repertoire. Yes, she takes risks and created some pretty out-there pieces (note the floor-length veiled bucket hat), but she’s no dummy when it comes to editing and curating a whole collection that will sell. Savvy and rebellious—those are the key qualities that truly make this designer one to watch.
11 August 2017
Yves Saint Laurent. Ralph Lauren. And as of this morning, Astrid Andersen too. The young Danish designer of ceremonially lush, basketball-based sports luxe took on one of fashion’s most laden tropes: safari. “All the houses have done that safari theme,” she said. “And that’s what I want to do: Take something that has a place in fashion history, but do it our way.” Thus, this was not “safari” in the dentist-shoots-lion sense. The only real whisper of that generic source material were the billows pockets that featured on some of her long-yolked collarless shirts and heat-sealed technical parkas, plus some sunbonnet headwear. This was more “safari” in the sense of its Arabic via Swahili derivation of travel: an expedition-equipped Andersen.It visited several of her landmarks. Iridescent lace from Sophie Hallette was used in those hats, as well as on the hems of cropped logo sweats and panels in parkas. Other fabrics drawn from non-sportswear traditions include crushed velvet used in racerback vests and tracksuits, a bird-and-flower print on pistachio silk, and a horizontally lined feminine tweed in blue or green. For the first time Andersen incorporated shirting patterns to give added credence to her pitch for the tracksuit as formalwear. With the exception of one mighty fur that looked like it really might have been bagged in the wild, this collection gently stepped back from the baroque opulence of last season to present a more pared down, at least for Andersen, wardrobe for modern wanderers. Chunky jewelry, most of it worn on the arm, made from Brazilian crystals and Philippine acacia by the Danish firm Monies, was their souvenir picked up en route.
11 June 2017
Walking intoAstrid Andersen’s first full womenswear show, the cool factor was palpable before the first look hit the runway. The crowd gave off a radical vibe, which, up until that moment, was noticeably absent from the rest of the front rows in Copenhagen. As soon as the Frank Ocean soundtrack went silent and DJ James Massiah’s voice took over, Andersen began her lineup with a sultry version of the tracksuit: a long burgundy skirt with a high slit and banded waistline worn with a matching crop top. From there, the gold-buttoned track pant morphed into a sophisticated velvet shirt that was cut long to the ankle and short in the back. The designer also used casual corduroy to craft slouchy great-looking jumpsuits and oversize jackets with shearling collars. Andersen accessorized her Fall clothes with velvet flatcaps à la Grandmaster Flash and white Nike Flyknit sneakers. When it came to prints, she kept her signature basketball-inspired logo throughout, while also showing a subtle black and gray leopard pattern and a painterly feather symbol printed on silk.With menswear and womenswear, which debuted Spring ’17, Andersen has proven herself a master at fusing hip-hop culture with beautifully executed fashion, which is no easy feat considering how much streetwear we’re seeing at the moment. In her hometown of Copenhagen, with lace and velvet spun brilliantly onto comfortable athletic gear for her new female fans (and old ones who have been buying her menswear), the designer has given the fashion world a fresh and provocative new perspective on a ubiquitous trend. It’s your game now, Ms. Andersen.
4 February 2017
This was basketball courtliness; Henry VIII meets the Harlem Globetrotters; a sumptuous Astrid Andersen exercise in elevating her core sporting source material through thoughtfully luxurious fabrication.Watercolored feather prints on silk velour tracksuits, smock shirts, and dressing gown coats, plus real feathers—pheasant and peacock, they looked like—used as Byronesque raffish earpieces were the purposely analogue emblems of her new season plumage. Against silky technical fabrics like a gunmetal leopard print, Andersen played with a palette of sophisticatedly regal color: bottle green velvet, burgundy, and golden corduroy, with gold lace from Sophie Hallette. As the models walked in their backward flat caps and jewel-toned, fur-fringed parkas, James Massiah read a bittersweet love poem that synced sweetly with the clothes. Andersen’s silhouettes are contemporary, completely, but the soul of this collection bared something only rarely found in sportswear-sourced-streetwear: romanticism. What was notably not shown here was womenswear. Andersen went co-ed last season but will now show her womenswear during Copenhagen Fashion Week, which is a bit of shame; these heroes deserved heroines.
8 January 2017
Here’s a question for wiser minds than mine. As fashion designers begin to combine their men’s and women’s collections into a single show, where should the dutiful onlooker’s eye travel? Sure, the eyehasto travel —that’s established—but which continental shelf, masculine or feminine, should it land on? Or is it both?ThisAstrid Andersenshow(s) seems like a good time to raise that question. The 31-year-old, Danish-born, London-showing, internationally relevant designer has been belting out luxury sports-street menswear collections since 2010 and has built a cracking business based on that. Like Pigalle and Palace, plus many others you don’t regularly see on this site, Andersen is rooted in a 21st century vernacular of basketball and hip-hop. Her men’s collection today was spiffy. Personally,je veuxthe black sheepskin and the perforated bomber and the Nike slides (badly) and I wish I could wear the python-print track pants. The tailored long-length short-sleeved shirts with nametag patches on the chest were reminiscent of early ’90s streetwear, as was the Tribe Called Quest pre-show soundtrack. The guy in a knitted dress was surprising, but he totally owned that look—and looked good in it too. The mixture of snake print, gold flash, and lace-trim was very Andersen: decadent finishes on streetwear. The worry bead accessories along with the length of some of the pieces were reminiscent of where Europe meets Africa and Asia.So if this were a menswear collection, this is when your designated writer would normally stop, offer a vaguely authoritative summation, and then sidle off to bed. But no. Like so many collections to come, there was another side to this show; Andersen, after much incubation, presented her first womenswear.And despite the immunity of much of the audience to its appeal, this was exciting and new and kind of important, too. All of those decadent Andersen flashes that seem subversive on her men seem infinitely less so on her women. Yet the lace-trimmed basketball shorts and tracksuits, although less transgressive, were just as affecting and perhaps even more original in a feminine context. Because no collection for women that this author has ever seen has ever embraced sportswear so sincerely, and so authentically, while simultaneously elevating it. One full-length-at-the-front, shoulder-blade-short-at-the-back variation on the basketball vest-dress looked like a truly new garment.
So in summation: Even though this show contained some mighty fine menswear, the headline was its womenswear. Nice one(s), Astrid Andersen.
11 June 2016
Astrid Andersenelevates sports-sourced streetwear—the daily uniform of so much of the world—through the application of lushly luxurious fabrications and decorative detail. She shows a couture line in Paris that’s heavy on fur; this main line has featured both fur and lace for a while now, and she loves a pastel. Andersen challenges her customers to assert the full extent of their masculinity over clothes touched by the froufrou.Today seemed to represent a departure from that template. Two all-gray woolen tracksuits with popper pockets seemed downright dour. And wait, was that a loose wool notch-lapel overcoat? Admittedly, the coat was worn over track pants with a panel of golden Sophie Hallette lace above the knee—yet this felt like a daring, almost retrograde incorporation of the startlingly conventional within the designer’s reliably unconventional aesthetic. Chunky knits rested easily under parkas the wearer could deconstruct by a web of golden zippers. An irregularly folded velour was the basis of a louche tracksuit. Later, there were more woolen remixes of the sweatshirt and dungarees, this time in RAF blue. Sure, there was more lace and a powerful pistachio section for customers determined to draw every eye in the room. And feather-stuffed gauntlets are hardly prosaic items of masculine apparel. Alongside gold, pistachio starred again in the weave of the tweed specially developed by Andersen and Linton, a traditional English fabric supplier. This was an intriguing exercise in inclusivity—by broadening her range, Andersen demonstrated that her core style could translate well beyond its existing fan base. This reviewer has long admired her work as an aesthetic exercise but is a hopeless geriatric to whom it never seemed personally relevant. Today, for the first time, I could easily imagine wearing some of it, too. Just nothing in pistachio.
9 January 2016
A Danish designer based in London referencing kung fu movies for a label that's finding love at the highest echelons of U.S. hip-hop: Astrid Andersen has gone global in the best possible way. Today, she developed last season's Assassin's Creed-meets-Ghost Dogaesthetic, inspired by a trip to Shanghai and a think about VHS-era martial arts signifiers. Chucked into that mix, said her notes, was a little bit ofBig Trouble in Little China. (Surely Kurt Russell's masterpiece, the movie is currently subject to disturbing rumors of a Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson remake.) This correspondent must confess to being no pro when it comes to traditional Chinese dress, but Andersen's blossom-brocade mash-ups of changshan with parkas plus baseball, basketball, and hockey shirts seemed why-has-nobody-done-this-before obvious and strong. Supplemental patches of silk brocade on the front of basketball shorts ingeniously communicated ostentatious kung fu master élan. Beneath the martial art top notes—and those hats—ran the core Andersen codes; urbanized sportswear refreshed by recourse to lush color, decoration, and fabrication: urban sports luxe. A$AP Ferg, in London to launch a collaboration with Andersen tonight, didn't stop filming until the very last model disappeared back down the runway.
13 June 2015
If you think about it, the only place youdon'tsee the Swoosh pretty much every day in 2015 is on the runway. That's because Nike is wary of fashion, for fear an overemphasis on for-the-sake-of-it aesthetics might compromise its athletic-driven brand identity. So props to Astrid Andersen, who was again granted permission by the Portland gatekeepers to feature its footwear—what looked like a ruggedized, hiker-laced Air Max variant—at her Fall '15 show today.That she consults for Nike no doubt helps, but Andersen's established recipe of exaggerated urban sportswear haloed with hyper-feminine detailing is counterintuitively compelling enough to sidestep Nike's issues with the F word. This time round though, Anderson significantly remixed her formula.Although she cited theHagakure(a text of stern warrior edicts consulted by Forest Whitaker's hitman protagonist in Jim Jarmusch'sGhost Dog), her clothes attacked the eye in a way that was more special-forces-touched than samurai. There was a vaguely threatening uniformity in the berets, the loose trousers hemmed by tight elastic above those Nikes, and shirting buttoned severely up to the neck. Andersen's branding was turned into shimmer-effect ID-like patches or blown up on a texturized basketball vest that featured pink damask patterning—this collection's incongruously pretty decorative detail.First on a lace hoodie with matching beret, then as trim on a short-sleeved shirt and a sweat, next applied to that shaggy vest, and finally on a fur hat, the pink came at us in a five-look flurry before unexpectedly receding. In its place Andersen launched an extended riff of red, gray, and berry-toned faded plaids, some knit, some not, but all relatively conventional—and consequently rather less intriguing than what came before. So why rein back? Why mute the girly touches that need a real man to wear them? Perhaps Andersen is keeping her glitter dry for the launch of her "debut bespoke line" in New York next month. Or perhaps she can't find enough men with the cojones to wear herDancing With the Stars-iest pieces.
10 January 2015
Replacing hip-hop with Japanese sumo wrestling propelled Danish designer Astrid Andersen's collection into new yet very familiar territory. "My first stockists were in Japan," Andersen said backstage after the show, and during a recent trip she observed how Japanese guys styled her clothes differently than what she's used to. "The way I see sexy isn't the same as the Japanese, and with this collection I wanted to create a hybrid of the two."In reality, this still meant hunky guys in basketball jerseys (this time in purple fur), but with the addition of kimono-style robes and a type of apron—called akesho-mawashi—which sumo wrestlers wear during their ring-entering ceremony. "They tell a story with these aprons about where they are from. That's exactly what I want to do with my brand. I want it to feel like it's for a certain type of boy," Andersen explained. Color-wise it was her boldest collection so far, translating into crushed velvet tracksuits in amber orange, or boxing robes in a color scale from purple over pink and back to orange. There were Andersen favorites, like lace-covered sports bras for men (perhaps some of these men needed the support for their muscular moobs), while a cross between a bolero jacket and sporty hoodie over a transparent top—putting the viewer's gaze firmly on the model's six-pack—alluded to the current fetishism surrounding washboard stomachs among young men.This collection surely will tickle the Andersen fan's fancy, but there's a fine line between staples and schtick, and some of what was shown just felt a bit too dragged down by déjà vu. There's no denying that what the designer does is subversive in some way, but exactly how? Is it adding a radical street vibe into fashion or does it go the other way—injecting gender confusion into what is in essence a macho culture. Knowing that A$AP Rocky is one of Andersen's admirers (she recently created a unique fur coat for the rapper), it seems more likely to be the latter, since Rocky's fashion-savvy wardrobe has caused more conservative dressers to raise a scandalized eyebrow on several occasions.
14 June 2014
Astrid Andersen's hyperthyroid menswear comes with constants. There will always be jerseys. There will always be fur. There will always be hip-hop blasting on the soundtrack. But for Fall, you had only to look at the logo on your seat—Andersen's usual basketball-cum-rune, only now half melted and smeared—to see something different. That melted, moiré effect turned into a jacquard that ran through the show. It looked, in the abstract, like the marbled endpapers of a hand-printed book, circa a century or two back.Or so you thought. Andersen arched an eyebrow at the suggestion. No, she said, the collection this season was inspired byOnly God Forgives,the gritty, neo-noir gangster film by fellow Dane Nicolas Winding Refn. "It's the juxtaposition of the movie—brutal but so sensitive," the designer said after the show. "I wanted the colors and the fabrics to feel quite sensitive—you have that feminine feel, but I wanted the guys to be more aggressive."Feminine was the shine, the hair (long, stick-straight, center-parted). Luxurious were the swirling golds, turquoises, and icy blues, even as they were accented by sweats with snap-over shorts, inspired by nineties Adidas gear. This new softer luxe eked Andersen forward, but even as the codes, like the logo, got scrambled, many of the same strictures remained. There's a sense with Andersen that she's doing her version of "street," but it can tend toward the literal. A full-length fur splashed with her name was music-video ready, which brought you full circle from Danish gangster to gangster rap, the most frequently dropped reference where the designer is concerned. What was interesting was that she wasn't ready to cede the point. "It does have references to American hip-hop culture," she admitted. "That's where my fascination lies. But I don't think it's gangster. For me, it's just a confidence thing. Whenever someone is that confident and wearing a long fur coat, hebecomesgangster."
5 January 2014
Astrid Andersen, like her fellow MAN alums Agi & Sam, struck out on her own today. "Today, you really felt the difference," she said backstage after the show. "To go on yourself, to get everything together."Her aesthetic, deeply indebted to what tends, euphemistically, to get called "urban" culture, has been consistent throughout. The difference, such as there was this time, was largely in degree rather than kind. Having flirted with commercial salability last season, Andersen dialed up the heat for her first solo outing in London. Her models, whose heft and bulk made the rest of menswear's willowy runway walkers look like tadpoles, were daubed with sweat. They wore Astrid-logo hoodies, trimmed in Danish mink and lace, and oversize basketball shorts, but here, more than in recent memory, they were on uncovered display. "I wanted to go back to the essence of the sexiness of my brand. Itshouldbe strong," said the designer. "I didn't really want to be labeled as anything yet, so we needed to throw this back in there. This is what I love. I love men in this way, looking super-sexy. I think fashion needs that."The raw aggression and athleticism Andersen channels—in her training-gear-inspired pieces, in her casting, in her styling—recalls that of like-minded provocateurs: Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy in recent years, the great English menswear stylist Simon Foxton before that. That's not always to her credit. If her solo outing today consolidated and redoubled the approach she's been plying for seasons, it also suggested that there is a fine line between specificity and limitation. One look in particular, though, fluttered out as both sui generis and super-fabulous: a sheer jersey-cum-caftan in a New Agey crystal print.
15 June 2013