If you think about it, the only place you don't see 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 the Hagakure (a text of stern warrior edicts consulted by Forest Whitaker's hitman protagonist in Jim Jarmusch's Ghost 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 her Dancing With the Stars-iest pieces.
