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.
