DESIGNER
Meet Willy Chavarria, Fashion’s Sad Papi
All clothing (worn throughout) by Willy Chavarria. Necklace Model’s Own. Shoes Stylist’s Own.
Way before diversity became a fashion-industry buzzword, Willy Chavarria made it a hallmark of his eponymous label. Known as much for his oversized silhouettes and Chicano influences as he is for casting his shows exclusively with Black and Brown models, the California native turned his latest collection into an expression of post-pandemic malaise. “It’s about coming out of a dark stage in the world,” he says, “and really inhabiting space as a human.”
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Chavarria always wanted to be a designer, even before he realized it. “When I was really little, I used to ask my mom to buy me notebooks at the dollar store, and I would draw dresses in them,” he says. “That was me carving out my future in some way.”
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“I always identified as Mexican, because I was always told I was Mexican,” explains Chavarria, whose mother is white and father is Mexican American. “My mother moved in with my father’s family and very much assimilated into Mexican culture. I got a lot of schooling in civil rights, and the dark side of white people.”
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Chavarria knew that when he began his own project, it would reflect his roots. “I hadn’t seen a truly Chicano expression of style being done by a Chicano,” he says of launching his label. “I always wanted to do something that made people think and feel. The clothes and the message are equally important.”
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“Calvin Klein has been an inspiration for me since my childhood,” says Chavarria, who currently works as the brand’s senior vice president of design for North America. “It makes sense that I would have a role in creating its new identity. The minimalism and sexuality of early Calvin helped to form my own opinions of fashion. It’s only natural that I have come to play a part in the brand’s design philosophy.”
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The signature element in Chavarria’s clothes is a voluminous silhouette, which he describes as, “A statement about the area of space that we take up,” adding, “I think that it’s really nice when brown people or people of color are able to say, ‘Yeah, this is my space.’”
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For his FW21 collection, Chavarria zeroed in on a melancholic motif. “I felt like people were going to be doing a lot of color and excitement, and I wanted to be the opposite of that. I think it’s very Mexican, to have this sorrowful expression. You enjoy getting drunk on tequila, and crying with your friends.”
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Chavarria studied graphic design in college, but it was a job in the stockroom at Joe Boxer that led to his first job as a designer. “With the rapid pace of things today, people expect to be successful right away, and it ends up creating these hollow people that don’t really have a lot of depth,” says Chavarria, who also designed for Ralph Lauren. “Anytime somebody’s graduating from school and asking for advice, I tell them to just work their ass off, from the bottom up.”
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Model: Abe Yoon.
Hair: Darine Sengseevong using Davines at Art Department.
Makeup: Esther Foster using African Botanics and Dior.
Fashion Assistant: Lina Fatanat.
