Before His CFDA Win, Willy Chavarria Scooped Top Latin American Fashion Award
“Being recognized by your peers is the best thing, but being recognized by all of your community is even more extreme”, Willy Chavarria told WWD after winning “Designer of the Year” at the Latin American Fashion Awards.
Chavarria, designer of his own line who’s also the senior vice president of design at Calvin Klein, won the prize at the first edition of the Latin American Fashion Awards, the jury revealed on Nov. 4 in Altos De Chavón Amphitheater in Casa de Campo, Dominican Republic.
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Chavarria clearly is on a winning streak: The Latin American prize came only a few days before he would be named CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year at the event on Monday night in Manhattan.
In addition to the awards celebrating the best Latin American talent, the biennial fashion and culture project is set to create a development ecosystem for the winners. This includes participation in the White Show in Milan in June 2024, showcasing their work at the Fashion Hub Market of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana in Milan next September, and the sale of a selection of their collection through Farfetch.
Haider Ackermann was president of the jury, which also included Anna Dello Russo, Nina García, Karla Martínez de Salas, Carlos Nazario, Indya Moore, Kean Etro, Bruno Aveillan, Sara Sozzani Maino, Carmen Busquets, and Vívian Sotocórno.
Chavarria was born in Fresno, Calif., to an Irish-American mother and a Mexican-American father and pursued graphic design when he moved to San Francisco at the age of 20. “I thought I was going to be a graphic artist. Coming from a small town, I didn’t realize how many dimensions existed in the fashion industry,” he said.
It wasn’t until Chavarria joined Joe Boxer that he began to learn all the aspects of the business and even design textiles for the enterprise based in San Francisco. Later, he got involved with a cycling apparel company that was doing contract work for Ralph Lauren. “Ralph Lauren had the line that they launched that was all athletic [RLX], so they contracted it out to work with the cycling apparel company, and I ended up doing all the Ralph Lauren products. They hired me and brought me to New York, so it was kind of an amazing situation.”
After spending five years at Ralph Lauren, Chavarria launched together with his husband a vintage business. “It was the first time that we entrepreneurs started a new business like that, and it did very well. But after some years, it wasn’t completely fulfilling to me because I wasn’t designing with my heart, it was more commercial. In 2015, a Japanese store asked me if I’d make a collection for them, and it was all Willy Chavarria. That made me think: ‘should I consider doing this?’ So we changed the name of the store and established the brand in 2015.”
As for his aesthetic, Chavarria said, “A lot goes into the collection, beyond just clothing. I do like the idea of playing with space, the space around the garment, the space around us, and keeping in mind the space in the room that we are taking up.”
Over the last few seasons Chavarria’s shows have become one of the highlights of New York Fashion Week — which is clear from his winning the CFDA Award for Menswear Designer of the Year on Monday. “While I still have a deeper care for the influences of the style that starts on the streets and a lot of respect for the sport elements, I think I have expanded much more into couture and made-to-order; some of them are top-tier things that I wasn’t able to do when I was a younger brand. I’m self-started, so I didn’t have any outside funding,” he said of his brand’s evolution.
Since the very beginning, the firm has been directly related with social justice. “Immigration is a big deal for me,” he said. The brand works closely with Fresno Barrios Unidos, an organization that provides kids, young adults and their families with guidance within the community.
Following his nomination for the CFDA’s American Menswear Designer of the Year award in 2022, his achievement of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award and his CFDA win, the Latin American Fashion Award feels, somehow, a recognition connected to his roots. “It’s very powerful. We work so hard and we forget how important our work is. When we have our community and some of the people I respect most — Haider Ackermann, Nina García, Carlos Nazario, Indya Moore — on a panel deciding I’m having this amazing impact, it makes me feel very happy and it also elevates my responsibility.”
Chavarria is aiming to build a larger infrastructure for his label, as the demand is exceeding the current capacity. “At this point, I’m looking for a way to build a stronger infrastructure so that I can be resilient for what is coming,” he said.
As for the next season? “I haven’t started yet. I don’t know what that would be. Right now is a very sad time in the world. And those times usually take me a while.”
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