New York Fashion Week spring-summer 2013: Todd Snyder
NEW YORK -- The Collection: Todd Snyder, named one of GQ magazine’s best new menswear designers in America for 2012 and one of the runners-up for this year’s Swarovski Award for Menswear awarded by the CFDA (won by Phillip Lim), on Friday presented his spring 2013 collection in the Lincoln Center tents during Mercedes-Benz New York Fashion Week.
The inspiration: Snyder’s “Saharan Prep” collection was loosely inspired by the clothes worn by the Sahara-mapping cartographer in “The English Patient.” “It’s one of my favorite movies,” Snyder told us at the presentation, “and menswear goes through these cycles -- there was work wear for a while, and then there was military and then preppy, and this was a perfect way to combine elements of both the military and the preppy.”
Photos: NYFW Week celebrity sightingsThe look: Military-inspired chambray trousers and jackets, bomber jackets and a button-front dress shirt with epaulets mixed in with preppy corduroy pants, linen cardigan sweaters, double-breasted jackets and window-plaid club shorts, all rendered in a color palette that mixed dusty khaki, sun-faded reds, oranges, aquas and grays with crisp navy blues and stark white.
The scene: Presented in a staid tableau of 19 models on a raised platform in the Lincoln Center tents, the opening minutes of the presentation for the rising star of American menswear were as crowded as the New York subway during the morning commute -- though the throng was much better dressed.
The verdict: It’s no mirage -- Snyder’s cinema-inspired mash-up of sun-baked military influences and preppy sportswear is a refreshing oasis in a desert of preppy sameness.
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