Snoopy is trading his doghouse for a spot in the Meatpacking District. Starting Wednesday, a free exhibition called Snoopy in Style NYC opens at 25 Little West 12th Street, filling a 16,000-square-foot space with never-before-seen looks built around the world's most famous beagle and the rest of the Peanuts gang. The pop-up runs through September 26 and costs nothing to enter.
The exhibition bills itself as an immersive look at Peanuts fashion and cultural influence, spread across 10 themed areas that dig into where Charles Schulz found inspiration for his characters' looks, according to PIX11. Visitors will find statues, plush toys, character-inspired outfits and modern looks created specifically for Snoopy and Woodstock plush dolls, plus artifacts and sweaters that once belonged to Schulz himself, per the same report. Custom pieces from Levi's, Michael Kors Collection, Omega, Tommy Hilfiger and Tory Burch appear alongside contributions from Adidas, American Eagle, Coach, Kith and Gloria Steinem's foundation, Gloria's.
A Listening Lounge for Snoopy's Alter Ego
One of the standout stops is a listening lounge built around Joe Cool, the sunglasses-wearing alter ego Snoopy adopts when he wants to look effortlessly suave. The lounge plays Vince Guaraldi's jazz compositions, the same music that has become inseparable from the Peanuts brand since it first scored the animated specials decades ago. That soundtrack is currently at the center of a New York legal fight: in May, Lee Mendelson Film Productions filed a copyright lawsuit in Manhattan federal court accusing game developer GameMill Entertainment of illegally using Guaraldi's music in a Snoopy video game, as Hoodline reported at the time.
Jean Schulz, the widow of Charles Schulz, told PIX11 that the Peanuts characters, like people, had a distinct sense of style, a philosophy that runs through the entire exhibit. She preserves some of the artifacts that once belonged to her husband, several of which are featured in the New York show. According to the exhibition's framing, Schulz's own influences, including tennis and sweaters, shaped how he drew his characters, and he was reportedly friends with tennis legend Billie Jean King. Schulz also advocated for women's rights and Title IX, threads that surface in the exhibit's design choices.
Decades of Snoopy on the Runway
Snoopy's turn as a fashion icon is not new. The idea of dressing him up for designer showcases stretches back to December 1984, when the original Snoopy in Fashion exhibition debuted in Tokyo with custom designer outfits for Snoopy and his sister Belle, according to the Charles M. Schulz Museum. The concept reached its most rarefied moment in January 1990, when a 40th-anniversary version of Snoopy in Fashion opened at the Louvre in Paris, displaying 300 plush Snoopy dolls dressed by Giorgio Armani, Karl Lagerfeld, Oscar de la Renta and Bob Mackie, per the museum's records.
The current global tour builds on that legacy while marking Peanuts' 75th anniversary, tied to the comic strip's original syndicated debut on October 2, 1950, and Snoopy's first appearance two days later, according to IlNewyorkese. Snoopy in Style first launched internationally from March 22 to April 5, 2025, at the Hôtel du Grand Veneur in Paris's Marais district, before organizers expanded the concept for its New York run, as License Global reported. The Santa Rosa, California-based Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, which opened in August 2002 and holds more than 3,000 original comic strips and artifacts, co-curated the New York exhibit.
Schulz's Eye for Everyday Style
Beyond the couture connections, the exhibit taps into a quieter thread of Schulz's work: his habit of sketching real interior decor and everyday fashion straight out of American life. Schulz Museum curator Benjamin L. Clark told the Daily Cartoonist that Schulz mentally documented decades of home design, from the 1950s through the 1980s, within his strips, giving Peanuts an accidental archive of mid-century American style. That observational instinct extended to clothing too, with characters like Charlie Brown, Woodstock and Charline Brown reflecting the fashion sensibilities Schulz absorbed from the world around him.
Snoopy's fashion currency has also shown up well beyond museum walls this year. At August's ThriftCon event in Brooklyn, collectors displayed rare 1969 astronaut-suited Snoopy figures, underscoring his long run as a collectible streetwear and toy icon in New York, as Hoodline detailed. Peanuts branding has also spread through professional sports this year, including an August NFL preseason game hosted by the Chicago Bears with Snoopy plush giveaways and an upcoming October Columbus Blue Jackets promotion marking the 60th anniversary of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
For anyone hoping to take a piece of the exhibit home, PIX11 notes that visitors can buy Snoopy-branded fashion items from the on-site gift shop before heading back out onto Little West 12th Street. With free admission through September 26, the pop-up gives New Yorkers a rare, no-cost chance to see decades of Peanuts style history condensed into a single Meatpacking District stop.
