New gentlemanly endeavours

Regal and elegant—newly minted creative director Walter Chiapponi’s vision for Tod’s takes us back to a time where style and substance are one and the same.

- Asri Jasman

The autumn/winter 2020 men’s collection for Tod’s marks a new chapter for the Italian brand, one that’s peppered with hints of familiarity in the sense that the collection isn’t breaking new frontiers in men’s fashion. But neither is it stuck in sentimentality and nostalgia. Creative director Walter Chiapponi’s debut collection for Tod’s is a confident proposal for the return to elegance, without over-embellishing with ‘newness’ to balance tried-and-tested classics.

While his predecessor took the idea of modernity to mean using technology to further the limits of Tod’s leather craftsmanship —Andrea Incontri manipulated leathers to appear as denim or canvas—Chiapponi stripped down the idea of Tod’s man to its bare essentials. There’s no unnecessary experimenting in new techniques that could come across as gimmicky. Taking inspiration from iconic men who’ve had a flair for imbuing their own sense of style into classic wardrobe pieces, Chiapponi adopted that irreverent approach to rework what it means to be a modern man.