Sandro’s menswear category is moving fast; not only does the brand have double-digit growth, it also has big ambitions. “We’re always striving for just a touch of newness,” offered Ilan Chetrite, the founder and artistic director of Sandro Homme.
The brand may have 200 points of sale today, but Chetrite prefers to think of the company as it was a decade ago, when he was dropping a few men’s pieces into the women’s flagship in the Marais. “I knew I wanted to cater to men the same way that the women’s brand did for women,” he said.
By any measure, he has succeeded. For Spring, key pieces riff on nostalgia from less-complicated times (the Kennedy era springs to mind). Chetrite noted that inspiration might come from friends, an older brother, or photos from a family album dating to the ’50s or ’70s.
Sandro’s sweet spot lands somewhere between American-style workwear and Euro retro elegance. A double-breasted suit might pick up on city-trader style, but canoodle with a Cubist- (or even Cuban-) inspired shirt. Modernized throwbacks include floods and darted pants. Soft pink and cerulean blue mixed with tobacco hues. A vintage finish on leather hints at a life lived to the hilt; a striped knit references softer, gentler times.
Noting a preference for comfort of wear, colors that age well, and Milano knits, Chetrite muses, “When I go to work in the morning, to my mind we’re a small boutique.” That said, he acknowledges that success comes with a side of pressure. Sandro is rising to the occasion with a new menswear flagship on Prince Street in New York, set to open mid-August—all evidence points to a directional retail experiment.
“The goal is to be new every season and to be loyal to ourselves,” Chetrite said. “But the real point is bringing pleasure to what you do every day.”
