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You wouldn’t be blamed for failing to notice the staid tassel and Oxford loafers on Willy Chavarria’s runway on Friday. You may have been distracted by his plaid zoot-suit slacks and the gender-blending sharp-shouldered coats. Look downward: those loafers were prototypes for a collaboration Chavarria is working on with 102-year-old shoemaker Allen Edmonds. The designer says the shoes will launch in September, though they will be Willified in a manner he’s keeping close for now.
This is why Chavarria is a rising star of New York Fashion Week. This designer, who was born in Fresno, California, and has emerged from myriad roles at brands including Ralph Lauren, Joe Boxer and Yeezy Gap, is hollering at us with a voice so personal that we can imagine how it will twist and translate some of the most conservative men’s shoes in America.
“When I work with the big companies, I am giving them something, and it’s usually an ability to communicate sincerely with culture,” he said backstage following the show after his well-wishers cleared out on Friday night.
Chavarria is taking no prisoners in meticulously positioning his own collection to carry into American households, step by tiny step. The new shoes are one. His $300 ripped “Willy” briefs are another. “Distressed by the finest hands in Italy,” he says. For Spring 2024, the briefs will hit Dover Street Market and a number of sex toy stores in March. They have the cheeky logo “Willy” spelt out on the waistband, almost like a headline. I asked how he sourced the sex toy distributors — do they come to fashion week? — but the question was lost in hugs from his show staff. Either that, or he was avoiding it.
The latest evolution of Willy briefs was shown not on his runway but in a film Chavarria directed that played at the top of his show on Friday night in a space below his Greenpoint, Brooklyn studio. The camera held on them, worn by male and female models lifting weights in a gym, making them the film’s co-stars. These briefs were more wearable than last season’s, distressed with just a few holes at the seams.
Chavarria quit his job leading North American menswear at Calvin Klein last year. He knows men’s briefs, and it’s easy to imagine these on a Times Square billboard someday, should he ever be able to afford to advertise.
Chavarria, whose awards include a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in 2022 and the CFDA American Menswear Designer of the Year in 2023, showed his first eponymous collection in 2018. He sells on his website — where wide-legged wool trousers are priced at $2,500 — and in a few select retailers, including Dover Street Market and Farfetch. He’s launching a few bags this season — in black. He is building his brand carefully with the experience of someone who studied the fashion business in the trenches — he has worked in shipping departments, and he has developed diffusion collections.
“Sales margins,” he said of what he learnt working at big companies. “It was knowing we had to do a bag collection, and we needed so many in black and so many wallets. I am so glad I had jobs before I did it myself. I tell my interns, work as many jobs as you can, learn as much as you can.”
This season feels like a turning point, the kind where he’s becoming one of the designers that New York needs as much or more as he needs NYFW. He’s now in his big push, bootstrapped but shooting high. His show this season, he said, cost $350,000 and was done with the help of sponsors, including the tequila brand Don Julio and those Allen Edmonds shoes. That cost includes the production of the short film, which Chavarria directed.
“It’s a horrifying price if you don’t have money,” Chavarria said, wearing Allen Edmonds Oxford loafers, a blousy shin-length skirt, an oversized matching jacket and a woven shirt with giant lapels opened to reveal a rash of gold necklaces. He looked like Thom Browne married Freddie Mercury in east Los Angeles — a look that has the potential to make him one of the American greats.
Yet Chavarria is looking for work. He said he’d love to work for a European brand and would happily move to Europe again. He lived in Denmark for several years and says living in Copenhagen is “heaven”. He likes the corporate gigs, he said, “now that I know I can do both”.
He left Calvin Klein despite admiring the executives there because it was hard to have a dramatic impact quickly. “It’s a big company. It’s a giant. I realized it was going to take me 10 years to shift the ship,” he said.
I asked why American fashion, where he has worked for so long, is so often viewed as an also-ran. “The reason great stuff is happening in Paris is because there is very little support in the US,” he replied. “If I do a show in Paris, I’m going to get a venue. I'm going to have the city’s support. I’m going to have the red carpet rolled out because they want me to show in Paris. But show in New York — I’m on my own 100 per cent. I gotta find that $300,000.”
He looked wistfully at the legendary beginnings of some of the American greats, like Ralph Lauren, who got his start selling men’s ties by taking them door-to-door to department stores.
“Now, if you make a tie, you need to have a lot of marketing behind it,” Chavarria said. “You need to have social media campaigns; you need to invest in a website that can communicate the ideas. You have to manufacture at such low margins that you can actually sell it at a price that people can (afford). There are just so many different factors that are more challenging.”
For the time being, he has no advertising budget and is relying on high-profile friends of the brand, like Julia Fox and Amanda Lepore, to support him without being paid, for instance, to sit in his front row.
“To grow, you need a couple million dollars,” he continued, for all the marketing and brand infrastructure that retailers and consumers require. “I think it was less expensive for people like Calvin.”
Like he said, Willy Chavarria is open to taking meetings.
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