Where Scotland Meets American Menswear: Todd Snyder and Lagavulin Launch the Time & Craft Collection
There are collaborations that amount to little more than a logo sewn onto a hoodie, and then there are those that reach back into the soil of a place, pull out something elemental, and reconstruct it into something entirely new. The just-released Time & Craft collection from New York designer Todd Snyder and Lagavulin Single Malt Scotch Whisky falls decisively into the second category. Dropping on October 8, 2026, Time & Craft is a limited-edition menswear and lifestyle collection rooted in a shared appreciation for character developed through patience and process — arriving precisely as Todd Snyder New York marks its 15th anniversary, bringing together a designer known for giving new life to classic styles with a whisky shaped by more than two centuries of history on Islay, Scotland.
This isn't a partnership assembled by brand managers in a boardroom. Snyder is himself a single malt Scotch drinker with a genuine preference for Lagavulin 16-Year-Old, and that personal relationship made it possible for him to translate the colors and textures of Islay into a capsule of outerwear, knitwear, and accessories that feels lived-in rather than manufactured. The resulting pieces carry the weight of two creative philosophies that happen to rhyme across centuries and continents.
Lagavulin: The Distillery That Refused to Be an Afterthought
A History Forged in Peat and Salt Air
To understand why this collaboration has the resonance it does, it helps to understand Lagavulin's extraordinary standing in the world of Scotch. Part of the triumvirate of heavily-peated southern Islay malts, alongside Ardbeg and Laphroaig, Lagavulin distillery was officially founded in 1816 by John Johnston — though illicit distillation is said to have been carried out on the site since the mid-18th century — and is now owned by drinks giant Diageo, serving as the Islay representative of Diageo's Classic Malts selection since 1987.
The name Lagavulin, pronounced Lagga-voulin, comes from Gaelic and roughly means "hollow by the mill" — a name that speaks to the geography of the place as much as the spirit produced within it. The distillery sits in the south of Islay with breathtaking views over Lagavulin Bay, and its whiskies are made with water from the Solan Lochs, while the peat — so crucial to their distinctive flavor — comes from the extensive peat bogs in the west of the island.
When Lagavulin 16 Year Old joined the Classic Malts portfolio in 1989, the belief within owner UD — now Diageo — was that it would be the single malt which only the most dedicated, even crazy, drinker would attempt to conquer. Smoke, it was felt in those early days of single malt, was a step too far for most people. Glenkinchie and Dalwhinnie, softer and easier going, would be the big sellers. That prediction turned out to be spectacularly wrong. What actually happened was that Lagavulin became the runaway success, to the extent that it had to be put on allocation. In the American market especially, where bourbon drinkers' palates had been trained on char, smoke, and deep wood notes, Lagavulin's intensity found an immediate and passionate audience.
What Makes the 16-Year-Old the Standard-Bearer
There are four stills at Lagavulin, two of them pear-shaped in the style inherited from Malt Mill, which run for longer than any others on Islay. Lagavulin whiskies will be in the stills for more than five hours for the first distillation and more than nine hours for the second — a commitment to slowness that is fundamental to the flavor profile. The collection takes its name and inspiration from the Time & Craft that is central to both houses, with Lagavulin 16-Year-Old serving as a core reference — a signature expression made at the Lagavulin Distillery on Islay through a notably slow distillation before spending at least 16 years maturing in oak casks.
The 16-Year-Old is an 86-proof whisky with the intense, full-bodied flavor reminiscent of a driftwood fire at dusk. The taste of dry peat smoke with strong maritime notes results in a complex dram that is complemented by a long, elegant finish. Late whisky writer Michael Jackson, widely considered the foremost authority of his era, captured its character with unusual precision: "An Islay classic. In the peatiness typical of the island, this is the most powerfully, intensely, dry. It also has smoke, salt and seaweedy, medicinal notes, though those characteristics are more evident in some of its neighbours."
The distillery's longevity is not merely a marketing claim. Iain McArthur worked with Lagavulin whisky for 53 years, before he hung up his valinch for a final time in December 2023. Famous for his legendary Warehouse Tastings, Iain was a vital part of bringing the joy of Islay's finest whisky to the world. That depth of institutional memory — decades of knowledge passed from hand to hand — is precisely the kind of heritage that resonates with a craftsman like Todd Snyder.
Todd Snyder: 15 Years of American Craft, Informed by the World
Building a Label on Earned Credibility
Snyder held influential roles at Ralph Lauren, The Gap, and J.Crew before he founded his eponymous label 15 years ago. Those years inside America's most iconic clothing institutions gave him a working fluency in the visual language of classic American menswear — the workwear silhouettes, the quality fabrics, the restrained palettes — while also teaching him exactly which corners the big brands cut. His own label became, in essence, a correction of those compromises: the same archetypes, but done properly.
Snyder integrates a windswept Scottish aesthetic into a design process oriented around the ethos "America, informed by the world." That philosophy has made his brand distinct in a market crowded with either slavish heritage reproduction or cynical trend-chasing. Snyder didn't make a list of heritage pieces he associated with Scotland; he created a character and designed the world around him. "I think about the character, and what's the jacket he is going to wear," he has said — a method that produces clothes that feel inhabited rather than designed.
A Personal Relationship With the Bottle
The origin of Snyder's connection to Lagavulin is the kind of detail that separates a genuine collaboration from a sponsored endorsement. Snyder credits Frank Muytjens, former head of menswear design at J.Crew, as the person who introduced him to Scotch. He recalls them sitting together at The Okura Tokyo with a dram. Since then, Lagavulin 16 has been a go-to.
When he speaks about the spirit itself, the appreciation is not performative. "For obvious reasons, the smoke is everything," he told Surface. And on the philosophical alignment between the two brands: "What I realized early on is that we share the same ethos as far as respect for craft. With Lagavulin, there is such a reverence for that. When I design, I am very much the same way. The provenance of things is so important to me — and having respect for where things begin and the ability to endure generations. You are left with this liquid that is so magnificent."
This isn't Snyder's first foray into whisky-adjacent fashion, which further validates the sincerity of the partnership. In 2018 he made a limited-edition capsule with The Balvenie, built from handcrafted pieces that incorporated wood from the distillery's barrels. That prior precedent established a track record: Snyder knows how to take a distillery's raw material and translate it into something wearable without reducing either brand to a gimmick.
The Time & Craft Collection: Piece by Piece
A Tartan That Finally Left the Archives
The central material achievement of the Time & Craft collection is the activation of Lagavulin's officially registered tartan — a pattern that most distilleries would have left folded in a drawer. When a Scotch distillery registers an official pattern with the Scottish Register of Tartans, the design rarely moves beyond internal archives, staff uniforms, or gift-shop souvenirs. Menswear designer Todd Snyder, known for elevating classic American workwear and tailoring staples, is taking a different route, becoming the first menswear house to take the officially registered Lagavulin Islay Tartan and build a complete fashion collection around it.
Textiles from Scotland's Lovat Mill anchor the collection's two hero pieces, including an Italian suede Stable Jacket lined in the Lagavulin Islay Tartan, originally developed by Simon Goldman and Myles Kusaba, and Todd Snyder's signature Chore Coat, made from another Lovat wool that draws on the tartan's deep greens, peat browns, and copper tones. Introduced in 2025 and officially registered with the Scottish Register of Tartans, the tartan pattern also appears in printed interpretations across a tie, blanket, and neckwear.
The Hero Piece: Suede Stable Jacket
The obvious showpiece is an Italian calf suede Stable Jacket lined in the Lagavulin Islay Tartan, a pattern introduced in 2025 and registered with the Scottish Register of Tartans. Made from Italian calf suede produced by Pellemoda in Tuscany, the jacket is lined in the Lagavulin Islay Tartan woven by Lovat Mill in Scotland. The combination of Tuscan leather craftsmanship and Scottish mill weaving inside a single garment encapsulates what makes this collection structurally unusual — it is a genuinely international object, assembled from the best sourcing each tradition has to offer, in service of a coherent aesthetic point of view.
The color selection for the suede was not arbitrary. "The brown hue of the hero item in our Time & Craft Collection — the suede stable jacket — is a perfect color match to peat," Snyder said. "It is dark yet bright and feels of the earth, natural and malleable and almost a bit liquid." The retail price is $2,498 for this Italian calf suede jacket lined in the tartan — a number that reflects the sourcing, not a luxury markup for its own sake.
The Chore Coat and Wool Pieces
The other headliner is a chore jacket cut from 500-gram wool tweed woven at Scotland's Lovat Mill, in colors pulled from the tartan's greens, peat browns, and copper tones. Made from 100% wool tweed woven at Lovat Mill in Scotland, the 500-gram fabric combines smoky, earthy colors inspired by the Lagavulin Islay Tartan in a substantial, marled cloth with a soft but rustic feel. At $568, the wool chore coat joins the suede jacket as the capsule's structural anchors.
Rounding things out are a Fair Isle sweater jacket and beanie in superfine merino, a lambswool blanket with a Portuguese suede carrier, and a printed wool tie and scarf. The capsule is also rounded out by a cardigan and beanie knit from superfine merino wool in a custom pattern inspired by the colors of the Scottish moors. The blanket deserves particular mention: woven at Lovat Mill in Scotland from pure lambswool, it is soft but sturdy, with a classic, old-school look and feel, and the Lagavulin tartan pattern features gentle colors inspired by the distillery and moor — soft coppers, muted heathers, peat tones that render the Islay landscape in textile form.
Lovat Mill: The Institution Behind the Fabric
To construct the collection, Snyder partnered with Lovat Mill in Hawick, Scotland — a legendary weaver regarded as a guardian of Scottish textile heritage — to produce custom tweeds and wools that reflect Islay's rugged landscape. Hawick is a mill town in the Scottish Borders with a weaving tradition that stretches back centuries, and Lovat Mill's reputation for producing heavyweight, durable cloths makes it a natural counterpart to the physical demands of Islay's climate. The choice of Lovat was not incidental; it was integral to the collection's claim to authenticity.
The Campaign: Shot on Location, Cast With Purpose
Ben Ahlers and the Distillery Floor
Actor Ben Ahlers serves as the face of the Time & Craft campaign, with Snyder and Ahlers visiting Islay, Scotland, where Lagavulin operates a distillery, to shoot the campaign. The eight-piece collection came out in October. Photographed by Boo George, the campaign unfolds across the distillery's copper stills, its stone warehouses, and the open landscape of Islay itself — environments that communicate the collection's reference points more directly than any studio backdrop could.
Ahlers spoke directly to the experience: "Being at Lagavulin, you see what it takes to carry more than 200 years of craft forward. I met people who've spent decades at the distillery, passing their knowledge on to the next generation. That experience shapes the whisky, and you can feel the pride people take in making it. Wearing Todd's collection there, I could see how he'd translated that same care into the clothes."
Ahlers added that Scotch, and fine menswear, take time to create and cannot be rushed — a sentiment that doubles as the collection's thesis statement, and one that happens to describe the overlap between the two brands with unusual precision.
The Human Archive of Lagavulin
What distinguishes the campaign most sharply from typical brand partnerships is its decision to foreground the actual people of Lagavulin rather than simply using the distillery as scenery. Featured alongside Ahlers are former Lagavulin Warehouse Manager Iain "Pinky" McArthur, whose more than 50 years in Scotch have made him an Islay legend; Donnie MacKinnon, who spent 42 years at Lagavulin, and his grandson Shane, who continues the family connection; current Senior Operators Grant Addison and Robert Shaw; and Karen Robertson, an Islay native who grew up overlooking Lagavulin Bay.
The presence of Iain "Pinky" McArthur in particular carries weight. A warehouse manager whose career at Lagavulin spanned more than five decades, McArthur became something close to a folk figure in the world of Scotch, known for conducting warehouse tastings that gave visitors direct access to maturing casks. His inclusion in the campaign grounds it in the real institutional history of the place rather than a romanticized facsimile of it. The MacKinnon family's multi-generational presence — grandfather Donnie's 42 years alongside his grandson Shane — reinforces the campaign's core argument that the most meaningful things are built slowly, across time.
Jamie Young, VP Scotch at Diageo, articulated the foundation of the partnership clearly: "As someone who genuinely loves Lagavulin 16-Year-Old, we were excited to immerse Todd in the place behind the whisky — our distillery on the island of Islay — as well as the generations of people who have crafted our spirit for more than 200 years."
What This Collaboration Means for Both Industries
A Model for How Spirits Brands Should Engage Fashion
The distilled spirits industry has a long and largely undistinguished history of fashion collaborations — most of them little more than co-branded merchandise sold in gift shops. Time & Craft is a different animal, and the difference comes down to specificity. Plenty of drinks collabs can and do slap a logo on a hoodie. This one has a registered tartan, mill-woven wool, and a designer who says Lagavulin has been his favorite whisky for years. That distinction is not cosmetic; it determines whether the resulting objects have any life beyond the press release.
The decision to build the collection around the Lagavulin Islay Tartan — a pattern that exists in the Scottish Register of Tartans and carries all the historical weight of that institution — elevates the collaboration above the promotional. A tartan is not a logo. It is a formal declaration of identity, rooted in place and lineage. By activating it in mill-woven wool from Lovat Mill and structuring an entire collection around its palette, Snyder is treating the distillery's cultural identity as source material rather than brand asset. That distinction matters enormously to the kind of consumer both brands are courting.
The Americana-Scotland Axis
From an aesthetic standpoint, the Time & Craft collection is also a study in how American menswear and Scottish textile traditions can be joined without one consuming the other. Snyder's design DNA — rooted in workwear, relaxed tailoring, and the kind of garments that improve with wear — maps cleanly onto the Islay palette of peat brown, copper, and muted green. The chore coat is an American vernacular form filled with Scottish material. The stable jacket is a silhouette with Anglo-American roots wrapped in Tuscan suede and lined with a tartan from a Borders mill. None of these choices feel forced, because none of them are.
As one brand voice put it: "They cherish goods that begin with exceptional ingredients, are shaped by time, and are crafted at the hands of people who care deeply about what they create, from an item of clothing to a bottle of Scotch." That framing — exceptional ingredients, time, care — describes both the whisky in the bottle and the jacket on the rack with equal accuracy, and that is precisely why the collaboration holds together as a coherent statement rather than a commercial exercise.
The Anniversary Timing and Its Significance
The fact that Time & Craft arrives at Todd Snyder's 15th year in business is not merely a convenient hook. For a brand built on the idea that quality compounds over time — that a garment, like a whisky, becomes more itself the longer it exists — a 15-year milestone is a legitimizing event. The collaboration brings together a designer known for giving new life to classic styles with a whisky shaped by more than two centuries of history on Islay, Scotland — and in that asymmetry, Snyder's 15 years are placed in conversation with Lagavulin's 200-plus, creating a kind of temporal dialogue that the collection itself embodies.
For Lagavulin, the partnership represents an unusual and sophisticated move into American cultural territory. Rather than advertising through traditional channels, the distillery is embedding itself within a curated menswear capsule — reaching an audience that already speaks the language of craft, provenance, and intentional consumption. That audience overlaps almost perfectly with the American male consumer who has driven Scotch's remarkable growth in the United States over the past decade, particularly in the peated single malt category where Lagavulin has long been the benchmark.
Where to Find It — and Why It Won't Last Long
The Time & Craft collection is available at toddsnyder.com/lagavulin and select Todd Snyder stores across the US, with prices ranging from $128 for the beanie to $2,498 for the suede jacket. Given the limited nature of the run, the sourcing complexity involved — Pellemoda suede from Tuscany, Lovat Mill tweeds from Hawick, superfine merino knitwear — and the track record of Snyder's previous whisky collaborations selling through quickly, the window on this collection will be narrow.
The collection's pricing structure is instructive. At $128 for the beanie, it provides an entry point for anyone drawn to the project. At $568 for the wool chore coat and $2,498 for the suede stable jacket, it climbs to a level that reflects what quality materials and skilled production actually cost. There are no filler pieces at cynical price points designed to manufacture the appearance of accessibility. Each item carries its price honestly, which is the least surprising thing about a collaboration between two brands for whom the word "craft" has always been a description rather than a tagline.
The story will unfold beyond launch, offering a deeper look at the Lagavulin Distillery and the people, places and rituals shaped by time. That ongoing content dimension suggests both brands are treating this as more than a seasonal drop — it is a sustained conversation about what it means to make something well, and why that process deserves patience. In an era when most fashion collaborations exhaust themselves within 48 hours of the announcement, that commitment to a longer arc is, in itself, a statement of values.
Lagavulin has spent more than two centuries making a case for slowness in a world that rewards speed. Todd Snyder has spent 15 years making a case for permanence in an industry addicted to novelty. Time & Craft is what happens when those two arguments decide to share a room — and, apparently, a dram.
