On Friday afternoon, as I previewed the latest fashion collection by the American men’s wear designer Todd Snyder, an aged dress shirt grabbed my attention. Pinned to a thatched mood board of inspiration material in Mr. Snyder’s Midtown Manhattan design studio was a dusty gray and blue striped button-up. Its tag didn’t read Todd Snyder, but Giorgio Armani, Made in Italy.
“I’ve had that a long time,” said Mr. Snyder, a hale Midwesterner who has become something of a style guide for American men who aspire for something beyond the Gap but still harbor an aversion to the avant.
“That’s when I got into fashion,” said Mr. Snyder, reflecting on the 1980s heyday of Mr. Armani, when his sloping shoulders and all-unstructured-everything look coated the world. “I couldn’t afford to buy a designer shirt, so I would go to fabric stores and I would kind of make my own.”
If Mr. Armani, the Italian apparel emperor who died this month at 91, was a catalyst for Mr. Snyder back then, he remains so today. Mr. Snyder’s collection, which showed over the weekend, was peppered with Armani allusions — such as below-the-knee shorts and power suits with sport coats cut nearly as long as those shorts. I concluded, sitting at the show, that Mr. Armani’s greatest legacy might have been convincing men that double-pleated trousers might just change their lives.
(I also concluded that Mr. Snyder’s agreeable clothes would have been better served had he channeled Mr. Armani’s insouciant styling. Mr. Snyder has long worked with Jim Moore, a former GQ editor, and this show was yoked by too many dated editorial tricks, like too-short ties, shirts unbuttoned all the way for maximum male cleavage and pizza-sized fedoras.)
Perhaps it was just the timing of things, but during this particular fashion week, I kept sensing Mr. Armani’s long shadow at shows, especially on the men’s side of the runway.
At Calvin Klein, freshly revitalized under the designer Veronica Leoni, who is based in Rome, creations like buttoned-to-the-neck blazers and a slate-gray trench with the texture of crinkled cardboard pulsed with an Armani-esque cool. Colbo, a downtown New York store that decided it was ready for the runway, leaned on Armani-isms for its debut. Its dusty desert palette, proportions (in a word: elephantine) and crunchy knitwear were all Giorgio hat tips.
That is not to say that Mr. Armani was the only designer hovering on the side of the runway like a gate-crasher.
At a particularly convincing show from the New York fashion scene stalwart Eckhaus Latta, the skintight cheesecloth sweaters and stark-black chauffeur suits owed a debt to the austere Austrian Helmut Lang.
J. Press, a preppy institution with its best days behind it, thought a new creative director, Jack Carlson, might offer some oomph. Unfortunately, Mr. Carlson’s tiresome rugby shirts and repp ties landed like reheated leftovers from Ralph Lauren’s kitchen. Shoppers for that by-the-book preppy style could, instead, have walked over to the Ralph Lauren flagship store, which was mere steps from the Upper East Side club where Mr. Carlson made his J. Press debut.
Perhaps this is why Mr. Armani — into his 90s and even in death — remains such a vital reference. He could never have been accused of being moribund, as his overarching look never grew stale on the rack. Those pleated trousers that flattered shoppers in 1995 do the same today. This is why so many collectors (and more than a few designers) diligently amass old Armani Collezioni pieces off eBay.
“He’s been the grandfather, the North Star,” said Jockum Hallin, one of the founders of Our Legacy, a Swedish label that hosted a dinner on the sidelines of New York Fashion Week. Last year, Our Legacy collaborated with Emporio Armani, which gave Mr. Hallin and his partners a chance to meet the man himself — and also a chance to study the Armani archives. That experience underlined how responsible Mr. Armani was for how Mr. Hallin and so many men like him dress.
“It’s the relaxed elegance,” Mr. Hallin said. “You could be three hours on the sofa and be very cozy, but you stand up and you’re looking elegant.”
Mr. Hallin was attired for the evening in a breezy white button-up and dark trousers. The whole outfit could have been made by Armani, yet it was, in fact, all Our Legacy.
Jacob Gallagher is a Times reporter covering fashion and style.
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