How Todd Snyder Cracked Music City

The "store that feels like a home," is a lie, one of my most hated fashion clichés. They all feel like home because they're all nice to you because they want you to buy a suit. There is, however, an art to retail. Appointing a space, sourcing vintage, and making something that speaks to the clothes you're selling is most often perfected by independent stores. Brands are surprisingly bad at it, especially considering it's half (the more appealing half) of the shopping experience. If there's one big-time retailer that gets it, really gets it, it's Todd Snyder. I'm a big fan of the Liquor Store in downtown Manhattan and the Townhouse in Chicago. Its Buckhead outpost is the only store I enjoy going to on the north side of Atlanta. Todd Snyder's most recent work of art, a new outpost in Nashville, Tennessee, might be its best to date.

A few weeks back, the brand hosted a party to celebrate its second southern outpost. (Miami and Dallas don't count down here.) In a town that's made fun of for being a bro-country and bachelorette party paradise, the Todd Snyder crowd was county for people that love country, the real heads. Jason Isbell—an all-time singer-songwriter already, if you ask me—co-hosted the event and was dressed in a seersucker Todd Snyder suit. Marty Stuart, a legend of the genre who played with Johnny Cash and has the world's best collection of country music memorabilia, was there and rocking his standard uniform: fringe jacket, black western shirt, and a silk wild rag. Nathan Followill, one of the Kings of Leon brothers, whose first two records are in my Southern Rock pantheon, was in attendance with his wife, singer-songwriter Jessie Baylin. Plenty of Nashville tastemakers, stylists, and designers, like Savannah Yarborough, founder of Esquire-beloved leather atelier Savas, were also seated at the long table.

The room was evidence of Todd Snyder's knack for bringing together the right crowd, not just the most famous one. Guests around the party told me Nashville's fashion community, by virtue of being a second- or third-tier market, are happy to have any national or international brand come to town, but that Todd Snyder was doing it the right way.

The store, on a corner lot in Nashville’s 12South neighborhood, is more bright and airy than other Todd Snyder locations.

Part of that is the brand's natural fit in Nashville, a town built by the music industry. Fashion designer-musician relationships are nothing new, but Todd Snyder is fresh off collaborations with Matt Berninger and Bon Iver, and the crowd that was pulled together in Nashville wasn't just a surface-level consideration.

"All my mood boards start with music. I think about what he's driving, what watch he's wearing, where he lives. But music is always the first part of it," Snyder says. But I think, to dig into another fashion cliché, it comes from his haberdasher's perspective. He's, at this point, the cornerstone of menswear at NYFW. On any given week, a celebrity or athlete is going to get snapped wearing his suits. But the man really cares about his customer, and he's obsessive about the store that customer walks into.

"I worked at a haberdashery in Des Moines, Iowa. That's when I got into helping guys dress well, and that's our whole reason for being." Snyder says. "It isn't about us telling you: This is what's cool; do it our way or no way. Each guy's different, has their own style, and it's about how you play with that."

There are, of course, plenty of Nashville touches in the vintage collection.

And each store's different to fit that city's customer. Again, not a novel concept, but it's one that Todd Snyder just has a knack for. Snyder says the team has long known Nashville is a hotspot for online orders. But when it came to developing a store for the city, it was about two years of research, development, and putting it all together. The result is something that speaks that that city's customer. In Nashville, there's a location-exclusive Dylan jacket in a deep brown suede, more country-rock than anything else the brand has put out. To match, the store is stocking tobacco brown suede Bennett Winch bags instead of the olive canvas version Todd Snyder sells in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Chicago. There's vintage cowboy boots with old Nashville touches—exotic vamps, higher heels, and colorful inlays—throughout the space. There's the obligatory vintage bolo ties and turquoise cuffs in the jewelry case, but they're next to vintage Rolexes and Todd Snyder's watch made in collaboration with Nashville's Weiss Watches. Linen shirts and leather sandals are styled with proper jackets and trousers. It's not hand-holding the Nashville customer or telling him what he should be wearing. It's having a conversation with him.

"Men dress really well here, and there's a unique style to it," Snyder says, and he wants to be the "one-stop shop," anywhere he ends up. The sales staff is the perfect billboard for the Nashville Todd Snyder guy. You see neck tats and trucker hats but below that he's in a suit, or he's wearing linen trousers and Todd Snyder x Sabah slip ons.

The other thing you get from this focus on being a one-stop menswear store is occasion dressing. That still makes up the backbone of what brings new customers to Todd Snyder.

"Guys come in, and it's like: I'm going on a trip. I'm going to a wedding. I'm getting married. We get a lot of that now," Snyder says. "But my favorite is when father and son come in, and dad's buying his son's first suit. It just kills me. I still remember my dad saying: Okay, this is how a suit should fit. This is where the sleeve should land, you know. My mom always wanted me to dress better, but my dad showed me how to dress better."

The store’s color palette leans warm, with plenty of velvet and suede.

The state of menswear designing being what it is—runway moments, a seasonal cycle of gimmicks, and getting the biggest names possible in your clothes—Todd Snyder's offering a more intentional focus I don't see from a ton of brands on that scale. It's about celebrities and artists that make sense. But more than anything, it's about the guys that are walking into the store.