design: Adam Arnold. photo: Pete Springer
We love a good neologism.
Investigative journalists that we are, (ha ha), we had to get to the bottom of the “snoob.” This, you’ll recall was the term used in the show notes at the Adam Arnold fashion show, Friday last, to refer to what was essentially a bodice-less sweater. Knit sleeves connected to either a turtleneck collar or a close-fitting hood. “Snoob” wasn’t in any of our fashion references and the Google was not a help, the “creative” non-fashion definitions at the Urban Dictionary, notwithstanding. (Some people apparently have more time on their hands than we do.) And we didn’t see any snoods on the models, so it couldn’t have been a recurring typo.
design: Adam Arnold. photo: Pete Springer
In a post-show conversation with Liz Dye, she said Joy Cohen, her English Department business partner had heard the term previously. We interrogated Cohen and it turns out that she heard the term from…Arnold. She thought it referred only to the helmet like hood on the stuffed animal that Arnold had made for her…or maybe, she said, the creature itself was a snoob. And so we moved one step farther away from an answer.
Finally outside Seaplane between the Dayna Pinkham show and the Linea show, we caught up with Arnold who said, yes, he made it up. “I wanted a term that was kind of friendly and ’snoob’ was it. I was realizing how handy they are when the days are cooling a little and I’m riding around on my bike and want my arms covered but don’t want to be too hot. Everybody should have one.”
WHAT TO DO NOW?