Not unlike his fellow Iowan, Halston, Todd Snyder is a fashion designer whose broader impact has been widely overlooked. His talent is to make the conventional look just unfamiliar enough to feel new but still make sense. While at J. Crew at the tail end of the aughts, Snyder de-schlubbed mainstream US tailoring with the Ludlow suit. He also invigorated mainstream US retail with his Liquor Store concept, which saw Timex watches, Barbour jackets and New Balance sneakers sold alongside recast own-brand preppy-dadcore in a pleasingly den-like environment alongside the Ghostbusters firehouse in Tribeca. Snyder’s work at Crew is a turn of the century connective membrane between Ralph Lauren and Aimé Leon Dore (with a twist of Paul Smith’s merchandising irreverence). Plus his first-generation Old Navy was all gravy.
A Lauren alum (of course), Snyder should really have been showing at Pitti years ago: This fair is the planet’s prime petri dish of mainstream Western masculine taste, and—in the US at least—Snyder has shown an MVP’s knack for divining the shape of consumer desire. Speaking backstage, he shared his cheat code: “Design for me is always about looking at the past while pushing forward. So there’s things like out of your dad’s closet, but reinvented.”
The first half of this evening’s show was dedicated to his new Black Label collection for Woolrich, the Italian operated heritage US brand. Its most quintessentially Snyder-ized piece came in look 30: a padded woollen shirt in buffalo tartan with a popper attached hood at the collar. Snyder teased out Venn overlaps between the technical, militaria, and outdoors folk, playing cable knits and aran against aviators and regally long puffers above hunting boots. Sling bags with webbing straps added a satisfyingly utilitarian edge, while floral embroidered fleece sherpas lent an almost Tyrolean quaintness. You couldn’t tell if this guy was en route for a midwinter hit job or an afternoon at the farmer’s market—either way he was both insulated and cool.
The second section was all Todd Snyder’s own label. This seemed a triple-whammy intersection between three main themes; 1930s anglo tailoring, 1950s militaria, and (most importantly) 1990s mainstream menswear. The mohair cardigans and long-skirted tailored jackets over wide-leg jeans took you on a flashback to a Details editorial, circa ’94—when this collection’s ideal audience’s infant impressions of menswear were being formed from their fathers’ shoulders. High-waisted cinched combat pants in dark, lush silks were simultaneously adventurous. Roomy tailoring came cut in the herringbones and houndstooths that modern Italian mills weave far more richly than the English ever did, and a camp collar shirt printed with a Van Gogh (courtesy of The Met) further invited you to consider the classic, freshly.
“I would say this is my favorite and most labored collection I’ve ever done,” Snyder said. The result was wrought in thought dedicated to clothing over concept: both familiar and new, which is tricky to do.
