Frederick Anderson Spring 2022 Ready-to-Wear

Oooh, well, I haven’t done this in a while: Uptown for a show, one with a celebratory atmosphere to boot, the gals in the audience, fans and friends of the designer, flocking together and turning it out almost as much as the models on the runway. Such was the scene at Frederick Anderson’s show at Park and 63rd on a rainy (but, oy, steamy) Thursday morning. It is an archetypal New York Fashion Week moment. Or it was, back when I moved here in 2000, before the energy and the focus shifted way downtown, and then beyond, onto Brooklyn and Queens. The diversification of visions and voices has been a terrific and welcome change for NYC fashion, but let’s not forget those designers who are giving a youthful and thoughtful twist to what was called, back in the day, ‘uptown clothes.’ We do need to be hearing, and acknowledging, everyone who makes up the particular patchwork of New York’s fashion scene. And, in reality, we can, in the case of Anderson, dispense with the uptown. What we have from him are pieces which mirror and enhance the lives of the women who actually buy and wear his designs. His look is borne out of creative interpretation of their needs and necessities, which he then shakes up into a cocktail laced with a bit of his own humor, fantasy—and a sly wink.