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.
