«Outdoor is the new street»: interview with Todd Snyder

Todd Snyder made his arrival in Italy and in the collective consciousness of the mainstream European public only last settinana, with his show at Pitti. But his brand has been going strong in America for thirteen years, in tailoring fanatic circles his name is already a classic, and his brand is poised to expand across the ocean-and not only because of his presence in Florence, but also because Snyder recently became the new creative director of Woolrich, one of the pillars of the American outdoor aesthetic as we know it. For the brand, Snyder personally designs the new premium Black Label line and directs the creativity of the brand's other collections - an influence that, scrolling through the lookbooks of the brand's various collections, flashes in the simplification of silhouettes, the newfound classicism of their design, and the eye for the ultra-modern detail that harkens back to the archives of a brand that helped create the iconography of the American outdoors. «Woolrich for me, being an American, it's always been part of my life», the designer told us last Saturday, «when I was younger I used to wear it and people that wore it 20-30 years ago still have it in their closet». Snyder has a peculiar sense for what is classic, but especially for what makes it modern: the garments of his Black Label return a sense of novelty, yes, but they also seem to harken back to the altered proportions, taste for elevated materials, and functional but never mundane details of archival, especially American, clothing. But what prompted both the brand and the designer to embark on such a venture?

Snyder was honest: bringing Woolrich back to being the classic brand he wore in his youth meant rethinking its design, aiming for a specific, more adult taste, but also more sensitive to cuts and silhouettes that would distinguish it from the massified genericness in which, in an age of fast fashion and easy knock-offs, every major global brand must avoid. «The biggest thing is they're a very commercial brand», Snyder says swiftly. «Woolrich was like so much a part of American culture. But then it kind of went away […]. When I used to work at other brands. I used to buy fabric from Woolwich. And this is in the nineties and, they shut down their mill. And so there's not a lot of American made things anymore», Snyder says with a hint of regret. But he knew how to turn things around:«When I started talking to Woolrich about a year and a half ago, they said, you know, we'd like to work with you. And I'm like, I'm not interested, you know, I've done a lot of collaborations. I don't want to just do a collaboration. And I said, but, you know, something I would consider is if you let me reimagine the brand and they said, here's the keys». All of Black Label's line-up is made in Italy, using Italian and Japanese fabrics («They're the best», he says) but there is no shortage of a capsule of Japanese denim, sweatshirts and T-shirts made in the United States.

The intention behind it was not only to reposition the brand but to restore the aura of classicism that made it a global empire in the first place. If this kind of classic outdoor style is back in full force today, it was also thanks to the ground prepared for entire decades by brands like Woolrich, which built its imagery from the ground up. The starting point was the archival («The brand has been around 193 years. There's so many things that they've done in those 193 years», the designer adds) but also a search for a modernity that balanced history and tradition with more modern needs. «Thinking about what are the things that they are famous for I asked myself: How do I re invent them? and what are the things that they don't have and how do I invent them?». A perfect example of this approach are the new boots, a category never before explored by the brand, which take up the classic Duck Boot typical of American outdoor imagery (L.L. Bean's celebrated ones that much loved by vintage seekers) but with «a modern soul» represented by a high Vibram sole in which the classic slotted upper is as if embedded but also a construction with real sheepskin fur that represents that product elevation and quest for quality and personality that Snyder has injected into his Black Label and also into the brand's remaining collections. 

A question arises at this point: if Snyder has gone for a return of the old-school Woolrich suitably reinvented, even integrating it into his own brand's runway show, the locations of which will sell the Black Label line, can we talk about a broader macro-trend concerning the return of a vintage taste toward star-studded wardrobe classics? In part, yes, but for Snyder the point of the discussion is different: «For the last 10 years, we've all been kind of following this kind of sportive style. At first it was athleisure and then became sportswear and then became sneakers. And all of that has been told and that was all about street style. I think the outdoors is the new street. So it's a new way of thinking about being active. But it's all about nature and it's all about hiking and fishing and so like blending that and giving it a cool edge is really worth».