Astrid Andersen Fall/Winter 2016 London

Astrid Andersen elevates 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.