“Eighth time’s the charm,” joked Todd Snyder about his recent nomination for CFDA’s Best Menswear Designer (alongside his former boss Ralph Lauren, no less). Well deserved: Snyder has proven to be one of American fashion’s biggest success stories of the 21st century, a man who’s built a juggernaut of a business out of appealing to a large swath of men who want to look good, but not distractingly so.
People sometimes knock him because, well, he’s commercial, as if the fact that his clothes resonate with guys outside the square mile surrounding Canal Street is some kind of shortcoming. Instead, he’s something of a rare bird today: a designer who specializes in a sort of retro cool that has broad appeal in our fractured times, who understands how a lot of grown men want to look.
Snyder has found a winning formula, and he sticks with it. He’s built a core of recognizable garments, and he renders them with a bit of ease and then, season to season, filters them through a novel prism. Maybe it’s Cuba, as it was a year or so back, or perhaps it’s mid-century jazz greats, like last fall, but he never gets too literal; it’s mostly just an invisible guiding hand.
This season was ostensibly a trip through the islands, though you’d be hard-pressed to guess that if you didn’t know. Beaded necklaces and books about the legendary (if controversial) photographer Peter Beard made it to his moodboard—but so did some moody, smoldering paintings that Snyder gravitated to for color. So the idea came through subtly in the palette of sunset pink, citrus yellow, and greens ranging from mint to bottle, plus a sumptuous crimson styled as a dramatic accent. Perhaps the most compelling connection couldn’t be seen at all: it was his liberal use of breezy linen, mixed with silk, wool, or cotton, yielding breathable garments that keep their shape and, crucially, resist wrinkles.
All this was applied to familiar Snyder archetypes—the higher-waisted pleated pants, the long, loose Bermuda-style shorts, the chore coats and smartly cut tailored jackets. The island theme came through more in his playful use of prints—namely cheery striped suiting and shirts (some in a filmy voile) printed with tropical landscapes and tigers, plus a few safari jackets.
The “sartorial element,” he said, is always important, and this season it came in rich browns, faded pajama stripes, crisp white, and dapper windowpane checks. And whether he takes home an award or not this November, Snyder has already won on the front where it matters most: guys like his stuff, and buy it.
