Why the CFDA menswear designer of the year nominee has California on his mind
Words by MAX BERLINGER
Todd Snyder hails from Iowa and built his career in New York City, but California has a special place in his heart. The veteran menswear designer traveled frequently to San Francisco when he worked for the Gap and Old Navy, and he fondly recalls spending time in Los Angeles scouring the city for vintage finds on research trips for Ralph Lauren (he dubs L.A. the “epicenter of American vintage”). Snyder has memories of visiting the warehouse that belonged to American Rag Cie, the longtime vintage destination on La Brea, and cherry-picking through its assortment — from Oxford shirts to jeans — before they made it to the sales floor.
“California is breathtaking,” Snyder says. “Going to San Francisco for work has everything: these amazing vineyards, the beautiful coastline, forests, skiing just two hours away in Lake Tahoe. It’s an incredible city with some of the best food. It’s pretty special. I definitely fell in love with it.”
For his own eponymous line, launched in 2011, Snyder has been doubling down on the West Coast by using Malibu, Palm Springs, and Big Sur as backdrops for his seasonal campaigns and tapping Hollywood heavyweights like Matt Bomer and Sterling K. Brown as models.
Now he is opening shops here at a healthy clip. This year has been especially busy: Following flagships at L.A.’s outdoor mall The Grove (which had a section devoted to suits and event dressing with its own on-site tailor for alterations) and in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley, he’s opening a smattering of new retail locations. There’s the charming bungalow on Abbot Kinney in Venice as well as locations at Marin Country Mart and in San Jose. Snyder likens these moves to what he did in New York, opening a 5,000-square-foot flagship on Madison Square Park before launching the smaller, folksier neighborhood-oriented shops, like the outpost in Tribeca, housed in the former J.Crew Liquor Shop space. In a full-circle moment, Snyder first tapped that storefront when he worked at the brand in the early aughts.
“Venice is like our Liquor Store,” says Snyder, who also notes that his company uses sales data as a guide toward areas where an in-person shop would be most fruitful. “It’s smaller, a little more vibey, a little less stuffy, a little more casual.” As for Marin Country Mart, Snyder remembered that many of the Gap CEOs lived nearby and thought it would be the perfect complement to the city location. Each shop offers its own specific slice of the Todd Snyder assortment — less tailoring in casual Venice Beach, say, and more transitional layers to accommodate San Francisco’s notoriously fickle microclimates — to help entice the local clientele. “It has been a dream come true,” he says. “Some days I have to pinch myself.”
When I’m designing, I’m wondering how I can inspire a guy to change.
Todd Snyder
It all comes at a critical juncture for the brand. Earlier this year, Snyder made a splashy return to the runway after sitting out a handful of seasons because of the pandemic. He did so with fanfare at the famed menswear trade show Pitti Immagine Uomo in Florence in January. While there, he also debuted a first look at his designs for Woolrich Black Label, an American outdoors brand operated out of Italy. He serves as creative director, designing rustic utility garments with a greater edge than his own brand. “We wanted to flex a little bit,” he says. He also wanted to remind his customers what he was capable of. “The consumer, and the way they see the product, they want to be inspired. If you walk into a car dealership, you may get the sedan, but you want to look at the sports car or the G Wagon. There’s the aspirational piece that every consumer wants.”
To that point, the designer also introduced the Todd Snyder Collection over the summer, a small higher-end collection of tailoring and sportswear featuring Japanese selvedge denim, cashmere polos, and gabardine jackets. “We wanted to make something that was luxury but not at a crazy price point, in limited runs,” he explains. “We’re working with the best mills in Italy, and we’re making really special things.” He tested a classic workwear chore coat crafted from 100 percent cashmere in a run of 50. At $1,800, they flew out the door — much to his surprise. “We thought, ‘Oh my God, this is incredible.’ So it’s about making sure we have the pinnacle of product, something for our customer to aspire to.”
During his career — which spans jobs at Ralph Lauren, Old Navy, and at the Gap and J.Crew, where he worked with legendary merchant Mickey Drexler — Snyder honed his talents and instincts for years before launching his own label (he is famously responsible for J.Crew’s Ludlow suit, a slim style that is still a bestseller today). The big lesson from these years of experiences, he says, is simple: Make excellent products and marry them to evocative storytelling.
He likes the way actors can help bring a certain dynamism to the photo shoots — in fact, he considers Paul Newman, who could look as stylish in a tuxedo on a red carpet as he did in jeans and a T-shirt in a race car, as one of his most enduring muses. “Not only do [Matt and Sterling] look incredible in the clothes, but they also bring such a spirit to the collection,” he says. “It helps complete the story. The way they’d move, or the way they’d make their face or brow look, brings things to life,” he says. “It was pretty cool.”
Indeed, the storytelling starts at the very beginning of Snyder’s design process. Each season he creates what he calls “characters” to design for, and thinks about not just the clothes but the whole lifestyle — what his job is, what car he drives, what his house looks like, what music he listens to, what movies he likes — and allows the clothing to spring forth from there.
Because of this grounded approach, Snyder’s clothes are both classic and versatile. It’s why you can easily imagine them on a variety of California archetypes: the sun-kissed Venice Beach surfer, a laid-back tech exec, a suave movie star, or his wheeler-dealer agent. “When I’m designing, I’m wondering how I can inspire a guy to change,” Snyder says. Indeed, his greatest strength may be that his clothing doesn’t feel like capital-F fashion, but more real, more everyday. It’s clothing to live one’s life in. “For a lot of guys, even if you like fashion, it can be daunting. We try to interpret it for our guy. We want to decode what’s going on in fashion and make it approachable so our guy feels comfortable.” toddsnyder.com.
This story originally appeared in the Fall Men’s Edition 2024 issue of C Magazine.
Discover more STYLE news.
See the story in our digital edition
