GREENPOINT, N.Y. — As the old adage goes: when in Rome, do as the Romans do.
In the case of Willy Chavarria, that expression has been changed to: when in Paris, do as the Parisians do.
So the collection that Chavarria will show in his debut at Paris Men’s Fashion Week on Sunday will be his most elevated to date. Distressed velvet suits, washed satin jackets, cashmere coats, candy red tuxedo jackets, leathers and shearlings, intricate cropped bouclé jackets, and an assortment of dresses and skirts for women are just some of the pieces he will show.
While the aesthetic remains the same — many of the pieces sport his signature oversize or lowrider silhouettes — the fabrics and the production clearly reflect a more luxury message.
“Mentally, I’m ready, my team is ready, and I feel like the collection is ready,” he said during a preview in his Brooklyn studio.
Last year was a breakout one for the Mexican American designer, 57, who spent decades working behind the scenes at top fashion brands including Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, American Eagle Outfitters, Yeezy, Dickies Construct and others. But in 2024, Chavarria was honored with Designer of the Year at the Latin American Fashion Awards as well as the CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year.
The 12 months were capped off with the invitation from the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, the organizing body Paris Fashion Week, to join the official calendar.
Although the official call didn’t come until the end of the year, Chavarria said he “designed the collection with the notion that I might be showing there. I had a hint, because the truth is, you have to be invited. But before you get invited, you have to plant a lot of seeds. I’ve been going to Paris over the last couple of years, meeting people and showing Paris what the Willy brand is. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback, so it was quite an honor to receive the invitation from the federation.”
The Willy Chavarria brand, which launched in 2015 and is now sold in 12 countries, counts Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, Dover Street Market, Maxfield’s and other U.S. retailers as customers. Over the past few years, Chavarria has worked to build a more mature business. This has included adding his husband, David Ramirez, who had worked in Copenhagen for the Pandora jewelry brand for eight years, as chief financial officer and chief operating officer. The result is that sales have more than doubled every year. As a private company, he would not disclose volume numbers.
As a result of that success, Chavarria said he was able to add a few key executives to his team, including lead designer Rebeca Mendoza, whose background includes Calvin Klein and Mark Cross.
“We met for coffee one day just to talk, she came into the studio, and I just realized that she was the one to take this on,” he said. “I’m not launching a women’s line, but I am doing more women’s styles. So while retailers right now will carry some of the unisex styles in the women’s department, I want to offer some styles that are specific to the female form. So I’ll have dresses, bustiers, little camis — things that I feel fit the Willy woman. But I didn’t want to really go into those styles until I had a woman designing with me. It’s important, I think, to have a woman, who knows the woman’s body, to design women’s clothes.”
In addition, he hired Thomas Poli as head of product development. “He’s French, he came from London, he knows luxury with precision, and he understands the development process,” Chavarria said. “In the past we haven’t been able to do several rounds of pattern development and fittings, because it’s costly. But now that the business is growing, we’re able to further refine patterns, so that they’re very, very signature, and the details in them are really distinct and special and surprising — things we don’t see anywhere else in the market.”
Production has also shifted from New York and Los Angeles to Italy and Portugal. Although denim and jerseys will still be manufactured in California and custom pieces will be made in New York, the rest of the line, including the tailoring and Chavarria’s new shirt category, are being made in Europe from Japanese and Italian fabrics.
Having more internal support is important, he said, as the business continues to grow. “The business is a lot to manage. We’re designing a lot and expanding into new categories like accessories, footwear and bags and product categories for DTC [direct-to-consumer] only, so we need a big team.”
Willy Chavarria
Diego Bendezu/WWD
Many people on the team are Latino, like Chavarria. So it’s no surprise that the Paris show will have a Latin flavor.
“I’m the first Mexican American designer to do a major show in Paris, as far as I know,” he said. “Because I’m a Latino designer, there will definitely be a Latino presence and I really want to highlight that as part of the collection.” That will include the cast, the guests and the aesthetic of the pieces. “It’s in a lot of the inspiration of the design as it always is,” he said.
“What a lot of people do when they go to Paris is something totally different than their own, because they want it to be Parisian,” he added. “But I’m doing exactly what we do, and I’m doing it on the Paris platform, because the message that we deliver is a global message, and I think it’s time that we spread the message on foreign soil.”
That message will center around “chiaroscuro,” he said, an art reference intended to speak to the dichotomy of life: the juxtaposition of dark and light, good and evil “and the beauty that lies in that. I was looking at a lot of Caravaggio paintings, which really started to bring in the velvet and the satins into the collection.”
Among the key pieces is the Heretic suit in crushed velvet that has been distressed so it “looks thousands of years old,” he said. Then there’s an opera coat/coach’s jacket with a 1950s-style pod shape on the back and a cropped shearling jacket with a hood and quilted interior.
Other elevated pieces include bouclé jackets in a boxy fit that Chavarria described as “my nod to Paris;” a chocolate brown double-face cashmere unlined topcoat, and a new version of a suit, the Chuco, offered in corduroy with a tailored shoulder and oversize silhouette paired with drawstring pants. “It feels like pajamas but with a structured shoulder so it still looks quite tailored,” he said.
The collection will also mark his move into shirts, all of which will include a “signature pocket,” or an opening in which to put the arm of a pair of glasses. Chavarria is launching accessories this season, including small leather goods such as wallets and belts as well as bags and totes.
But not everything is dressy. Oversize jeans, T-shirts and even a bodysuit with the word “Diablo” across the front will be part of the mix.
Chavarria will also show a “classic Chollo-style jacket that is straight from California in the 1950s and ’60s. Every Mexican American kid was wearing this jacket. I even have some vintage ones, but we redesigned it in a nicer fabric.”
As part of the show, Chavarria is partnering with Tinder to raise awareness and funds for the Human Rights Campaign and LGBTQIA+ rights. He designed an exclusive piece intended to speak to the resistance against the more than 570 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills introduced in the past year and Tinder has made a donation in Chavarria’s honor to the nonprofit organization.
Chavarria stressed that although he will be showing in Paris this season, he still considers himself an American designer and plans to have a presence of some sort during New York Fashion Week.
“It’s not like I’m leaving New York to go to Paris,” he said. “I’m just showing in Paris, but I’ll show in New York again for sure. I’m still loyal to the community that has supported me all these years.”
