Morgan Spector has just made his Met Gala red carpet debut wearing a devastating red and black suit by Willy Chavarría. For the actor, the connection with the designer is personal—Chavarría is from Fresno, a few hours away from where he grew up in “a pretty rural part of Northern California.” “You didn’t see high fashion on the street the way you do in LA or New York,” Spector recalled. “What you did see was people dressing with a very precise personal standard and attention to detail: an incredibly crisp crease in their trousers; a hemline set with staples to make sure there’s no break at all; shoes perfectly clean; haircut fresh and exact. In the ’90s the influence of cholo culture where I grew up was really profound. There were movies like Mi Vida Loca and Sangre Por Sangre that everyone watched and imitated; in the same way that hip hop style was filtering out of the cities and into the suburbs, this other much more locally relevant style was being borrowed and remixed by skater kids and rural white girls and everyone else.”
The silk faille red jacket with oversized shoulders and narrow waist may be one of Chavarría s signature silhouettes, but it was inspired by “The Garden of Time,” the J.G. Ballard story behind this year’s Met Gala dress code: it reminded the designer of the poem “In Flanders Field,” which can be heard in one of the exhibition rooms (read, appropriately, by Spector). “It speaks of flowers that grow over the graves of the dead," Chavarría explained. “This feels significant in today s state of global affairs.” The red silk faille poppies on his suit jacket also link back to the room full of poppies in the exhibition where the poem can be heard. “I so enjoy dressing the self-expression of a person; especially at a time when what someone projects to the world can have such an impact,” Chavarría added. “Morgan is thoughtful and elegant in his manner. I think he feels masculine, comfortable, and very much himself.”
Spector is consistently one half of one of the most stylish couples we know—his wife Rebecca Hall joined him on the red carpet in a dreamy gown by Danielle Frankel—something that can be attributed to the fact that he never takes himself too seriously. “For me the fun thing is figuring out how far I can go without feeling like I look like someone else,” he said. “I like classic men’s clothes—excellent tailoring, the kind of textiles that feel good in the hand, but I also like seeing what someone like Willy can do with those elements that’s wilder and more interesting than the standard suit.”
He continued, “The way he takes this defiant hypermasculinity and evaluates it very lovingly through a queer lens, it feels transgressive and smart and really fresh. I also just think the clothes are beautiful.”
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