Paris is full of billion-dollar brands with spectacular fashion shows. Today, Willy Chavarria—the Mexican American import who was just starting to make real waves in New York when he jumped headfirst across the pond a year ago—dared to compete.
We were at the Dojo de Paris, an events space where a little label called Valentino staged Alessandro Michele’s debut a year and a half ago. The giant room had been tricked out like a New York intersection, complete with crosswalk stripes, a telephone booth, a convertible Cadillac Coupe DeVille (that’s a guess), and, more oddly, a couple of apartments’ worth of furniture. The beds were for the performers Mon Laferte and Lunay, who played out a love affair gone sour (that’s another guess; my Spanish is lousy) as models crisscrossed the stage. Santos Bravos, a boy band born from a Latin American search contest show that’s about to go pop, was among the other acts. All the performers were Latin, and all are friends of Chavarria, the designer pointed out.
And then there was the crowd: The French content creator and host of @lawatchparty Lyas brought 400 of his followers to the venue, most of whom had never seen a fashion show live before. “It’s one of the steps we’re doing to try to open the doors of his industry,” Lyas told a reporter. Oh, and let’s not forget that the whole thing was filmed for a livestream that played on a giant screen like a rock concert.
The size of the production matched the scope of Chavarria’s ambition. “This is the most expansive reveal of my collection and what the brand offers,” he said beforehand backstage. “I’ve got tailoring for going to work. I’ve got sportswear for being chic and casual. I’ve got streetwear, like thugged-out streetwear, which is part of my Big Willy label that I’m launching ‘see-now- buy-now’ today. And I’m still doing Adidas. This collaboration is for the World Cup in partnership with the Mexican Federation.” There was eveningwear, too, including a pair of “sandwich” dresses: “The frontal view is an hourglass silhouette, and the back is a scoop back with a long silk train,” Chavarria explained.
The span of categories, which included some examples of the soberly chic suiting that’s trending almost everywhere at the moment, could be read as a sort of rejoinder to the giant brands that overlooked Chavarria in the recent round of creative-director changes. Though they may reconsider the oversight when they see the completed version of the “living film” that he and his collaborators created today, I, for one, hope Chavarria continues his independent drive forward. (In fact, he took a minority investment from the UAE’s Chalhoub Group last October.) There are too few 21st-century brands and too many zombie ones stumbling from one creative reversal to another.
Creative reversals aren’t on the table for Chavarria. His vision is as sharp and convincing as it gets, especially with regard to tailoring and workwear, and as for his womenswear, it’s coming along nicely. Just as resonant: the show’s message. Against the backdrop of what’s playing out in Minnesota and the looming great American crack-up, the show’s all-walks-of-life, we-are-in-this-together message produced a sentiment there’s not enough of at the moment: hope.
