It’s been 15 years since Todd Snyder left a steady paycheck as senior vice president of menswear at J.Crew to create his own eponymous collection. And he’s come a long way since those early days in a tiny office/showroom in Manhattan, where he and a small team developed a brand that set out to modernize classic American menswear.
Now a part of American Eagle Outfitters, which purchased the business for $11 million in 2015, Snyder consistently creates new menswear staples that are sold in a fleet of 24 stores around the country.
It was this history that the designer celebrated Sunday night during a dinner at Fasano Restaurant hosted by actor Ben Ahlers and Lagavulin Single Malt Scotch Whisky.
“I’m usually just heads down and working,” Snyder said earlier in the week at his showroom. “But when I stop to take it all in, it’s hard to believe. I remember that tiny room we had when we started, but we’ve never lost that entrepreneurial spirit.”
And he’s still focused on his mission, which is to design wearable and affordable pieces for today’s man. “That’s why we started in the first place,” he said. “Everything was either crazy expensive or crazy classic.”
He said looking back at the last 15 years, he gets “sentimental,” but knows that his path is a sure one. “I’m a much different person than I was back then and taste is built over time, but I still look at the collection as a foundation where I add on layers and a patina every season to give it character.”
At the dinner, he said that he has remained true to those “same core principles” that put him on the map. “It took time, it took craft, it took patience,” he said.
Snyder was introduced at the dinner by Ahlers of “The Gilded Age” and “The Village” fame; both men were born and raised in Iowa. As an Iowan, Ahlers said there weren’t a lot of people he could look to as “guideposts” as he was working to build a career, but Snyder was one of them.
Todd Snyder offered a breezy comfortable collection for spring.
Courtesy of Todd Snyder
Ahlers will be the face of Snyder’s latest campaign, “Time & Craft,” which will highlight the capsule collection he created with Lagavulin for fall. The eight-piece collection will come out in October.
Snyder and Ahlers visited Islay, Scotland, where Lagavulin operates a distillery, to shoot the campaign. “That’s the ethos that drives the campaign,” Ahlers said, adding that scotch, and fine menswear, take time to create and cannot be rushed.
The dinner also served as a thank you to the people who helped Snyder build his business, from retailers to press to his family. He thanked his wife, Proenza Schouler chief executive officer Shira Suveyke Snyder, and also recalled how his two young daughters would run out onto the runway during his bow to be part of the action and support him.
What the dinner wasn’t, however, was a spring 2027 collection preview. Although there were a handful of models at the cocktail hour prior to the seated dinner, they were more like icing on the cake rather than the main course.
But Snyder did design a full collection for the season that he titled “Lagon d’Azur,” or “Blue Lagoon.” The line featured a relaxed, romantic vibe intended to be the ideal summer wardrobe for an American abroad. In a preview with WWD, Snyder showed a range of three-button sack jackets, printed island shirts, high-waisted Hollywood trousers and suede utilitarian field jackets.
The collection featured a range of washed and faded colors such as azure, papaya and madder red that complemented the darker chocolate brown and black hues. “It’s much more color than I’ve done in the past,” he said.
Snyder described the collection as “nonchalant,” with its longer linen cargo shorts, Shaker sweaters, mesh tanks and soft tailoring. But there was also a taste of formalwear with a sueded linen double-breasted tuxedo and voile shirt.
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