High Fashion
Brooklyn designer H. Fredriksson recontours the silhouette
Inside Helena Fredriksson’s sprawling Williamsburg loft, canvases silk-screened with butterflies lean against the walls of her studio. A cutting board tips precariously off the edge of a table. Unsurprisingly, Fredriksson does most of her cutting here.
“I think that’s something that sets me apart [from other designers], she says. “… Just the fact that I do it from step one to step 10, from the shooting to assembling it. I’m very attached to the concept.”
For Fredriksson’s first show, she had 16 looks and “did every single garment” herself. There is none of that corporate aspect, no cold mechanics of factory-produced clothes. “It’s a little more relaxed here,” she says of Brooklyn’s quiet calm. Her workspace has the feel of an artist’s den, a collection of designs, prints, and ideas. After all, Fredriksson is an all-around artist, not somebody who went to Parsons to learn how to cut or sew seams or stitch.
“I don’t have any technical training—I never went to school for design. I went to school for art, sculpture, and photography,” she says. Her background peeks through in loose, billowing dresses that drape naturally off of the body and in structured, smart coats.
“I think my concept of shape is different. I think that I like to work more three-dimensional. I like to sort of cut it and shape it like a sculpture on the body instead of doing drawings and flat pictures,” Fredriksson says. However, her clothes are far from stern or unforgiving. Not only does she cite nature as one of her most important influences, she says, “I see the body as something that should be a part of the clothes rather than just as a hanger for the clothes. It’s a combination ... it’s the way that [she] thinks that clothing should be beautiful but also comfortable and feel good.”
For Fredriksson, fashion was a natural outgrowth out of her appreciation for art. “I realized I could incorporate all the two-dimensional visual stuff that I loved working with, like painting and photography and even graphics, and actually do it all in one,” she says. “It’s a very painterly way of putting a collection together. I think I figured ... it’s something people can wear and feel good in and make them happy, and also something that I can actually sell and make a living off of.”
These days, Fredriksson is not only making a living off of her clothing—she is faring incredibly well. Neiman Marcus will carry her designs this upcoming spring, and she has designed, and will continue to design, clothes for Ana of the much-loved dance-electro band Scissor Sisters. With aspirations of opening her own boutique and making her collection available at even more large retailers—opening it up to “the whole world”—Fredriksson has come a long way from the days when she would go through her mom’s fabric closet or cut apart and piece together vintage finds.
As Fredriksson says, “I guess it all just happened in a way that sort of wasn’t really a plan from the beginning.” And what a sweet surprise it is.