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LE ROCK | 8 SEPTEMBER 2024 | NEW YORK CITY
Todd Snyder is the man of the hour. Sterling K. Brown was featured in the brands’ “Man of Style” campaign this summer. Last fall’s sexy model was Matt Bomer. Snyder, the former director of menswear for The Gap and J. Crew, founded his eponymous label in 2011, opened his first L.A. store at The Grove last year, then a store on Abbot Kinney in Venice a few months ago. His aesthetic is a the best hybrid of classic menswear tropes: Savile Row tailoring, workwear and military uniforms. Because of their relaxed wearability and perfect cuts, Synder’s now considered the best of American men’s clothes designers, opening more eponymous stores all the time.
Sure, September spring/summer NYFW is mostly about women’s – but Friday Sept. 6 was dubbed “New York Men’s Day.” Snyder’s cocktail style runway (replete with actual martinis) show was held at the gentleman’s club-style Mad Men-esque Le Rock restaurant at 30 Rock (the NBC building and home of Saturday Night Live. Was the natty crowd as good looking as the models? Almost. But not quite. Our intrepid Avedon-aspirant shutterbug Thomas Drotar (not bad looking nor not natty himself) caught the backstage action, as Snyder, in black Sunday casual, let his stylists work the pre-show clothes while he worked press and photogs. About eighty to a hundred guests sat tableside intimate, as models passed through, wearing soft cut double breasted suits in pastel pink (real men still wear it, more than ever), oyster, tan, the palest blue. Then came the shorts suits, a la Thom Browne – but not in stiff menswear fabrics or pinstripes. These shorts suits – get used to them, they’re not going anywhere – were drapey, with soft jackets or delicate knit sweaters in tones ranging from cocoa to latte to cream to light grey, some in satin. It’s almost like Snyder, who’s famed for his hetero shapes, fits and fabrics, decided to turn some of his attention to metro and homosexual guys, who think nothing of layering soft pieces like shirts, shorts and trench coats together, creating a modern pastel pastiche. Honestly, there’s thankfully no divide in what straight, gay, bi or trans men wear anymore – lots of these pieces could be worn by women too, be just as flattering.
While Snyder’s best known for cool classics, he knows pushing the menswear envelope is where it’s at these days. There’s more action – more evolution – going on in the men’s category now than in women’s. We can thank Monsieurs Harry Styles, Colman Domingo, Timothee Chalamet, Matt Bomer, Oscar Isaac and Andrew Garfield for that – all fashionistas of a feather, giving men the freedom to where whatever the hell they want, without relinquishing power, authority, stature – in the same way women have been able to shirk off stone-color and tweed Armani and Theory suits in the corporate suites. Remember Brad Pitt in last summer’s skirt suit? The Rock in a pink tux at the Oscars? Do top stars, agents and lawyers need to dress differently than moguls? Not when “casual Fridays” can be any day now – the day-to-night dressing is more prevalent than ever. The signal of more emotional men? Bring it on, brothers.
LE ROCK | 8 SEPTEMBER 2024 | NEW YORK CITY
For spring 2025, Todd Snyder – never one for conventional shows or conventional clothes – presented his menswear collection late afternoon at the Art Deco Stylist boite Le Rock at 45 Rockefeller Plaza on Sunday September 8. Just the kind of place Snyder’s crowd would loiter over a martini on a Manhattan Sunday. Assembling a diverse team of male models with great features, not to mention bodies, the scene backstage – caught on the sly by our photographer Thomas Drotar (also a devotee of Snyder’s clothes). Staging a men’s show by a major designer in the midst of women’s spring 2025 fashion week takes some attitude, some chutzpah, some breaking from the norms, that only designers with a ton of buzz are willing to risk.
Assembled in all their pastel glory in an empty floor upstairs, the guys in varied trench coat, shorts suit, satin jacket, baggy white linens looks, showed off slouchy silhouettes – one soft suit in a three piece wood rose hue – vogueing it up for the shutterbugs, under the steady gaze of Snyder himself, he and his tailors checking fits and stylish designer flip flops before the male entourage wound its way through Le Rock’s tables, like a style army staking out the best oysters and martinis the city has to offer.