Sneyder Laurens and the Colors That Followed Home
For more than a decade, Sneyder Laurens imagined a future built around soccer. By eleven years old, the Barranquilla native was already pursuing the sport with the possibility of a professional career ahead. Leaving Colombia in search of greater opportunities disrupted that path and forced Sneyder to reconsider an identity that had largely been shaped around the game. “I had to let go of the future I once imagined and begin the difficult journey of discovering who I truly was,” Sneyder recalls. Fashion was not an immediate replacement. It emerged years later through painting, drawing, learning to sew and experimenting with transforming ordinary materials into something meaningful. Eventually, creating became more than an interest. “I discovered that creating something from nothing gave me a sense of purpose and fulfillment that I had never experienced anywhere else.”
In many ways, that creative foundation had been established long before Sneyder recognized it. Raised primarily by women, Sneyder grew up watching a grandmother sew and style hair while a mother was constantly crafting and creating by hand. Those memories now carry a different significance. Sneyder sees the work being created today as an extension of a creative legacy that the women in the family were not always given the opportunity to pursue fully. “Every piece I make carries a part of them with it,” Sneyder says. Learning to sew ultimately connected a new creative direction to something that had been present at home all along, making fashion not only a means of personal expression but also a continuation of the creativity Sneyder witnessed growing up.
Barranquilla provided another foundation. Sneyder describes a childhood surrounded by the energy of Carnaval and Afro Colombian traditions alongside music, food, beaches, flowers, coffee and a deeply rooted sense of community. These were not references discovered later through fashion research. They were part of everyday life and helped establish an early relationship with color, celebration and cultural expression. That relationship is increasingly visible in the clothing Sneyder creates today. Stripes, saturated combinations and graphic treatments recur throughout the brand, while pieces and collections carrying names such as Chroma, Rojos and Rainbows make color part of the language surrounding the work itself.
That willingness to be seen developed over time. Sneyder moved frequently while growing up and was often the new kid, with long, curly ginger hair making it difficult to disappear into a new environment. “For a long time, being different made me feel visible before I was ready, but eventually, I learned to embrace it as one of my greatest strengths.” Living in Puerto Rico for a period of time added another layer to that perspective. Moving between different cultures and communities expanded Sneyder’s understanding of how many forms beauty and human expression can take, something that continues to influence the work without disconnecting it from its Colombian foundation.
About five years ago, those experiences began taking shape through fashion. Sneyder eventually made the decision to leave college and dedicate more attention to creating, developing skills across sewing, styling, design and creative direction while building the namesake brand. The recent Chroma collection offers one of the clearest expressions of that developing visual language. Released in an extremely limited run of eleven pieces, including six shirts and five pairs of shorts, Chroma explores nostalgia through color, silhouette and a reimagined “S” motif. The collection does not attempt to recreate a particular era or memory literally. Instead, nostalgia becomes something that can be interpreted through the visual familiarity of color and form.
The ideas introduced through Chroma are continuing to evolve. Sneyder is developing a striped sleeve jacket and orange and black striped shorts alongside additional stripe colorways that will allow customers to create combinations that feel more personal. That flexibility reflects an approach to clothing that leaves space for the wearer rather than prescribing a complete identity. Sneyder can establish the visual language, but the person wearing the clothes ultimately determines how those pieces exist together.
One of Sneyder’s recent projects brought that language directly back to Colombia. Created as a tribute to Colombian roots and designed to connect with the striped shorts, the project became both a personal favorite and, in Sneyder’s words, the most joyful project to date. The inspiration extends beyond a single recognizable Colombian reference. “I come from folklore, tropical landscapes, music, dancing, celebration, fruit, coffee, flowers, and love,” Sneyder explains. Those elements offer a fuller understanding of what representing home can mean. Rather than placing culture onto a garment as decoration, Sneyder is interested in translating the feeling of that culture into something someone else can wear.
That distinction is important to understanding the brand. The clothing is informed by experiences that existed before there was a label attached to them: watching family members create with their hands, experiencing the visual and communal energy of Barranquilla, moving between different places and learning to embrace the characteristics that once made Sneyder uncomfortable with being noticed. Fashion became a space where those experiences could exist together, allowing cultural memory, personal identity and experimentation to inform the same creative practice.
Now based in Houston, Sneyder works across fashion design, styling, creative direction, directing and the management of the Sneyder Laurens brand. According to Sneyder, the work has reached all seven continents in less than a year, an expansive reach for a creative practice still closely connected to the place where the story began. There is an interesting symmetry in that trajectory. Leaving Colombia once meant letting go of a future that seemed established, while the creative career that followed has allowed pieces of Colombia to travel much farther than Sneyder could have anticipated when first learning to create.
The ambition now extends beyond simply growing a clothing company. Sneyder talks about chasing greatness as a way to inspire others and contribute something meaningful through art, but the values behind that ambition are notably human. “I believe art makes us more compassionate, sensitive, and emotionally connected,” Sneyder says. “The world needs more tenderness, romance, and genuine love and through my work, that is exactly what I hope to create and spread.” For a creative journey that began with having to imagine a life beyond the one originally planned, Sneyder Laurens is building something new from what was carried forward: family, culture, color, memory and the freedom that eventually came from learning to stand out.
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