On a warm April afternoon sunlight is flooding through the double height window of Frederick Anderson’s spanking new NoMad boutique, which is just around the corner from Dover Street Market. The light is hitting racks lined with sparkly tweed tailoring, handknit crochet sweater dresses, and a plentitude of Anderson’s slinkarama evening, and illuminating both the colorful abstract artworks on the wall by the artist Robert Santore and a Moroccan chaise cushioned with shaggy pillows. The chaise is a piece of furniture he bought in Marrakech that once sat in his midtown apartment, but which now takes pride of place under that sizable window.
The seat isn’t the only thing that has moved downtown. In launching his own store at 110 East 31st Street, Anderson has relocated his operations from his own home—the trials and tribulations of the pandemic—to a place where he can design and sell. His office and studio are at the back, out of the public gaze, though the opening hours will follow that of the working week: Monday will be appointment only, and Tuesday to Friday the space will be open to anyone who wants to just drop by. (When he was planning the store, he was thinking about those olde worlde storefront ateliers in New York and Paris—he loves what Azzedine Alaia had back in the day—and how they could make the experience of buying fashion more intimate, less transactional, almost as if you were in a home-like place.)
“When I started out in fashion [with the label Douglas Hannant] it was a different time; everything was ladylike, kind of…uptight,” says Anderson. “The whole thing was about the uptown girl. But that idea doesn’t really exist anymore. Now the conversation is about storytelling, essence, authenticity. I want people to see the full breadth of what I do, and I want people to come here and feel that they can shop and hang out, but for it not to feel pretentious. With me, what you see is what you get.”
One major benefit of that direct contact with his customers: He’s not sequestered away, hidden from the realities of designing for real women with real bodies who tend to have real ideas of their own about how they want to look. “When Douglas and I launched, we got the best advice from Geoffrey Beene,” he recalls. “‘Anyone can design anything,’ he told us, ‘but it has to make sense for her life. If you can do that, you can call it fashion.’”
While the official opening date of the Frederick Anderson boutique is still days away, his clients are already beating a path to its door. Like Malini Murjani, a designer and consultant, who has dropped by for a second fitting for a dress she plans to wear to her birthday party in Phuket in November: a sliver of golden satin-backed crepe with the effervescence of champagne, its deep décolleté formed from drapes falling from a halter neckline. Anderson and Murjani met, ooh, they can’t exactly recall where or when, but it feels like forever. What they do remember: the clothes of his that she has worn, like the purple dress that she took to a big wedding in India. “What I always say about Frederick,” says Murjani, “is that his clothes are effortless and chic—they’re just so easy to wear. Plus, he has the best laugh.” Says Anderson: “I think a lot of times the conversations I have are me trying to get into my clients’ heads. When we’re laughing, I get a lot of information.”
By now, Murjani is out of the blouse and jeans she arrived in, and into her birthday look-to-be. Anderson gets to work fitting it. Three fittings are, to his mind, enough: initial try-on; alterations check; then if need-be fine tuning. “I’ve had a lot of women come to me and say, ‘fittings always take so long and there’s too many of them,’” he says, “but they shouldn’t. It’s about getting it right by making it feel easy.” He notes that the waist is sitting perfectly, so his attention focuses on the drape at the front, for it to feel sensual without being too inadvertently revealing, and for the silhouette to gently work around her body. Anderson steps back to take it all in. “I don’t think we need to do too much more,” he says. “I want to work with the fabric to give the suggestion of your shape beneath. And…” he breaks off, giving a knowing look to the hem, which floods the floor; it’s the kind of look you give when you understand someone well. “I know you never like your dress to be too long, but to hit the toe.”
Plenty of his customer face time these days is spent debating how to wear sheer: His racks are full of filmy, wispy things which while revealing are also concealing—the dress may be transparent, but it also covers the body, usually top to toe. This sheerness thing is a bit of a tango between him and his women: He likes it from a design POV, while they gravitate towards it because they like the way it looks—a touch of daring that they can decide how far to go with. Anderson is full of suggestions: wear it lined, with teeny shorts, with leggings, with some veiling so the sense of reveal comes through but not that much. “ I was just in Dallas, at Stanley Korshak” he says, “and there were women who were like, ‘oh my God, I never thought about wearing sheer, but why isn’t everything lined?’ Because, I said, we are going to decide what we’re going to do with it. I want us to have that conversation.”
Right on cue, he is having that conversation with another client who has come by, the beauty and fashion entrepreneur Alida Boer, who wore Anderson for the first time—a black, long sleeved, high necked, floor length dress, sheer save for the embroideries which resemble bullrushes, under which she put a black bra top and boy shorts—to New York’s City Harvest benefit. Boer says that when she visited Anderson, she tried a few things, but it was the diaphanous dress that won out. Despite her initial hesitation Boer says she felt supported venturing into unknown fashion territory. “It was fun to hang out with Frederick,” she says. “He has this energy that’s welcoming. Even though I was rushing that day—I have three kids, so I am always rushing!—we talked through it all and decided fast.”
Now she’s thinking about her birthday in early June, with a Cuban themed party in New York, and she knows exactly what she wants. It’s the white ruffled dress with a long train which was in Anderson’s spring 2024 show, which was, until she tried it on, taking pride of place in the store’s window. The dress was inspired by swans, as in swan swans, not The Swans swans. Regardless, this birthday will be her swansong to her thirties. Only thing is June is soon and Boer wants the dress made in a shade of hot, smoky red. Barely blinking, Anderson lets out another sonic boom laugh. “Well,” he says, “We’d better get started.”
Frederick Anderson, 110 East 31st Street, New York; https://frederickandersonshop.com/