Todd Snyder has partnered with Harley-Davidson on a collection inspired by the team jerseys, workwear and leather jackets popular with its team racers.
This marks the first time Harley-Davidson, which was founded 119 years ago, has allowed an outside designer into its archives in Milwaukee.
To create the collection, Snyder went back to the early days of racing when American farm boys named “Floyd,” “Ray,” “Red” and “Otto” formed the nucleus of Harley’s racing team, whose mascot was an actual hog. The result is a collection that includes a Motor Jacket, which is a cotton windbreaker with a numeral one graphic that Harley introduced in 1969 after winning the AMA Grand National Championship; a Racer Tee with a graphic of a motorcycle that first appeared on the gas tank of the 1958 Sportster XLCH; The Coverall, an all-white jumpsuit in Japanese sulfur-dyed herringbone cotton that traces its history to 1919 when Harley first started training motorcycle mechanics, and the Trucker Jacket, a denim jacket with a silhouette similar to Snyder’s Dylan jacket, with World War II-era lettering on the back and genuine shank buttons.
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Snyder created the collection, which also includes long-sleeve T-shirts, Henleys, a checkerboard button-down camp shirt, quarter-zips tops and sweatshirts, with Champion sportswear.
“The biggest reason I was excited to work with Harley is the fact that Champion used to make product for them back in the ’50s and ’60s,” Snyder told WWD. “It was a new side to Champion that I hadn’t seen before.”
Snyder said that in designing the collection, he was “inspired by the heavyweight sweaters, leather jackets and vintage graphics that the racers from the early days of Harley wore. Some of the design inspirations for the collaboration date back to the ’20s and resemble collegiate athletic gear from that era; others like the orange and black Harley-Davidson logos from the ’60s are just beautiful examples of graphic design.”
The collection will launch on Feb. 25 and will retail from $58 for caps and $68 for T-shirts to $298 for the trucker jacket, $398 for the motor jacket and $498 for the coveralls. It will be sold at Snyder’s retail stores and his e-commerce site as well as on the Harley-Davidson online site in the U.S.