Men Strut Their Stuff At Their Very Own New York Fashion Week

VPM | By Jacki Lyden

Published July 16, 2015 at 8:34 AM EDT

Updated June 29, 2024

Designer Thom Browne says he usually shows his men's collections in Paris, but he felt it was important to support the first Fashion Week for men in New York.

Men’s fashion is having a huge moment: Higher sales, more designers, and now, the first-ever, stand-alone New York Fashion Week: Men’s, which closes tonight.

Celebrated designer Thom Browne opened the week: “I do show my men’s collection in Paris,” he says. “But, it being the inaugural season for Men’s Fashion Week here in New York, it was really important for me to be here and support men’s fashion here in New York.”

Buzzed-about designers Public School showed their collection in the form of a mock police lineup. / Jacki Lyden

The very buzzy designers Public School showed their spring 2016 collection in a mock police lineup — Asian men, white men, black men, a Sikh wearing a turban, all side by side in front of an official-looking backdrop as an announcer beckoned each to step forward in turn.

Dao-Yi Chow is one of the co-founders of Public School, along with Maxwell Osborne. “We wanted to draw that parallel, where basically everyone is dressed the same, side by side,” Chow says. “Everyone is the same. The message is about unity and solidarity, especially in these times.”

To Chow, a New York City native, fashion can be social commentary. He and Osborne have been nurtured by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the fashion industry trade association that’s putting on this show. This year, Chow and Osborne were named creative directors at DKNY.

One reason menswear is having such a significant moment? Social media. Bruce Pask, the men’s fashion director for Bergdorf Goodman, says information makes for a confident and curious shopper. “I think that information has served to really educate and excite a male shopper. And I think that is great for the business in general.”

The market-analysis firm Ibisworld says for menswear, sales in brick-and-mortar stores are growing 4 percent a year. Online, sales are even better: There’s an average of 17 percent annual growth rate, each year, over the past five years — and the CFDA wants to take advantage of this.

In the past, menswear has shown with the women in September. Now, the designers get their own stand-alone event, complete with big-name sponsors like Amazon Fashion and Cadillac, who want to support American design.

Todd Snyder backstage during his show — the biggest one he has ever done. Michael Loccisano / Getty Images

No designer is more all-American than Todd Snyder. The Iowa native and former high school athlete is suddenly breaking out after 20 years in fashion. This week, he spent $75,000 putting on his biggest show ever, with a large audience and deep bench of international buyers and editors.

“I really wanted to make it the best I can, just because I felt that eyes are upon us and we need to represent the U.S. well. I feel like I’m in Olympic battle. You’re always up against, you know, the Italians or the French or U.K. or Japan,” he says. “It’s always important to, like, show your best.”

It’s also important just to show up as a huge variety of people did: Athletes, musicians, actors … and the people who dress them, like Memsor Kamarake, the stylist for the acclaimed actor Anthony Mackie, who plays the superhero Falcon in movies from Marvel Studios.

“I think it’s great to check out the up-and-coming, bubbling talent. So I just love — if there’s a name I don’t know — to go and check it out. Because that’s what my job is. It’s my job to also help support the talent that’s here in this city. Having such a wide range of talent on display just makes my job a … lot easier,” he says.

New York Fashion Week: Men’s looks to become as hot a ticket as New York Fashion Week: Women’s. It’s not quite gender equity — womenswear is still much bigger — but it’s a big leap forward.

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Jacki Lyden

Longtime listeners recognize Jacki Lyden's voice from her frequent work as a substitute host on NPR. As a journalist who has been with NPR since 1979, Lyden regards herself first and foremost as a storyteller and looks for the distinctive human voice in a huge range of national and international stories.

In the last five years, Lyden has reported from diverse locations including Paris, New York, the backstreets of Baghdad, the byways around rural Kentucky and spent time among former prostitutes in Nashville.

Most recently, Lyden focused her reporting on the underground, literally. In partnership with National Geographic, she and photographer Stephen Alvarez explored the catacombs and underground of the City of Light. The report of the expedition aired on Weekend Edition Sunday and was the cover story of the February 2011 National Geographic magazine.

Lyden's book, Daughter of the Queen of Sheba, recounts her own experience growing up under the spell of a colorful mother suffering from manic depression. The memoir has been published in 11 foreign editions and is considered a memoir classic by The New York Times. Daughter of the Queen of Sheba has been in process as a film, based upon a script by the A-list writer, Karen Croner. She is working on a sequel to the book which will be about memory and what one can really hold on to in a tumultuous life.

Along with Scott Simon, current host of Weekend Edition Saturday, and producer Jonathan Baer, Lyden helped to pioneer NPR's Chicago bureau in 1979. Ten years later, Lyden became NPR's London correspondent and reported on the IRA in Northern Ireland.

In the summer of 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Lyden went to Amman, Jordan, where she covered the Gulf War often traveling to and reporting from Baghdad and many other Middle Eastern cites. Her work supported NPR's 1991 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for Gulf War coverage. Additionally, Lyden has reported from countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Iran. In 1995, she did a groundbreaking series for NPR on Iran on the emerging civil society and dissent, called "Iran at the Crossroads."

At home in Brooklyn on September 11, 2001, Lyden was NPR's first reporter on the air from New York that day. She shared in NPR's George Foster Peabody Award and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Lyden later covered the aftermath of the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In 2002, Lyden and producer Davar Ardalan received the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio and Television for best foreign documentary for "Loss and Its Aftermath." The film was about bereavement among Palestinians and Jews in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.

That same year Lyden hosted the "National Story Project" on Weekend All Things Considered with internationally-acclaimed novelist Paul Auster. The book that emerged from the show, I Thought My Father Was God, became a national bestseller.

Over the years, Lyden's articles have been publications such as Granta, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times and The Washington Post. She is a popular speaker, especially on mental health.

A graduate of Valparaiso University, Lyden was given an honorary Ph.D. from the school in 2010. She participated in Valparaiso's program of study at Cambridge University and was a 1991-92 Benton Fellow in Middle East studies at the University of Chicago.

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