Welcome to Willy Chavarria’s new América

The word icon is overused. Throw a rock towards the fashion industry and you’ll hit dozens of garments, trends, and individuals being crowned iconic. But if fabulousness is now inaccurately synonymous with iconic, the rarity of a true icon is lost. So what makes an icon? For fashion designer Willy Chavarria, it’s about “strength and conviction in one’s values.” He uses the title sparingly, saving it for individuals such as Sade Adu and Sinead O’Connor. 

Consistency and dedication to values is something that has to be tested over time. Chavarria has put in the time. He’s reinterpreted classic American symbols through a contemporary, disruptive lens, begging the question: who gets to define Americana? Over the past decade, his eponymous label has led with its values: equality and representation for all. For over twenty years before branching out on his own, Chavarria brought those values, rooted in his Chicano culture, to everything he touched—from his early days working in a shipping department to designer roles at household names. While he won’t claim the title of icon for himself, by his own definition— he has undoubtedly reached it.

Originally published in Dazed MENA Issue 01| Order Here

Chavarria was born in Fresno, an unglamorous agricultural city in the Central Valley of California, in 1967. His mother is of Irish descent, and his father is Mexican. He studied graphic design at the Academy of Art University, a few hours north in San Francisco while working part-time in the shipping department of Joe Boxer. There, he spent hours after work sketching designs leading to an internship and then a design role at the company. Following half a decade at Joe Boxer, he moved to cycling and sports apparel company Voler. In 1999, Chavarria began working on Ralph Lauren’s RFX, a diffusion line of cycling apparel, in collaboration with Voler. He left California for New York City, where he spent five years working across Ralph Lauren’s brands Purple Label, Black Label, and Polo Sport. He continued his work with American household names with an eight-year stint in the print and pattern department at American Eagle. In 2010, Chavarria opened Palmer Trading Company, a menswear store selling vintage and contemporary pieces with an Americana aesthetic. 

Establishing his eponymous label (stylised as WILLY CHAVARRIA) in 2015, the designer brought his experience tailoring at Ralph Lauren, appreciation for basics at Joe Boxer, andreferences to workwear and Americana masculinity at Dickies to the menswear brand. In 2023, Chavarria dipped his toe into womenswear by offering a secondary, more femme cut of the suit, though the gender distinction isn’t important to him. (“All the heads on my sketches are just circles,” he says). He has since expanded to dresses and hopes to focus on gowns in coming collections. With the likes of Madonna, Billie Eilish, Bad Bunny, and Venus Williams among his many famous fans, he quickly became heavily decorated. In 2021, Chavarria was a winner of the CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund. In 2023, he was celebrated as CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year. The list goes on.

Some designers issue press releases with lofty language about the symbolism of a collection—curatorial balderdash that looks great in a programme, but doesn’t add up to much meaning, let alone action. Chavarria isn’t interested in using fashion as a Trojan horse, sneaking in a lesson for those with the time to decode. He leaves no margin for confusion. His shows are more aligned with demonstrations or performance art than a traditional runway. His preferred topics: marginalised identity and the United States of America.

His Spring/Summer 2025 collection, América, presented ready-to-wear inspired by hourly workers that make up the country’s backbone, from farm and construction workers to retail employees. The American flag was hung during the runway show, and each seat came with a copy of the United States Constitution courtesy of the non-profit American Civil Liberties Union, urging us to reconsider the document and its claims to democracy. It’s also a reminder of one’s rights during a time when both feel fragile.

His latest collection, Tarantula, debuted at Paris Fashion Week earlier this year, mere days after the inauguration of President Trump. Tarantula pairs hyper-masculine and femme separates with Chavarria’s signature exaggerated tailoring featuring emphasised collars and shoulders. Velvet and leather in rich reds and glossy blacks contrast with gingham and plaid patterns. Formalwear alternates between nylon tracksuits and shirtless, tattooed models. Bandannas, Catholic rosaries, and oversized fabric roses serve as accents. Motifs of Latinidad, moustaches, bouffants, and thin eyebrows – often co-opted by brands as high fashion on white models – are presented organically on brown faces.

“The collection’s story is about the struggle to preserve identity at a time when identity is under threat,” Chavarria says from his New York City home during a moment of peace amongst fashion week madness. Since Tarantula debuted, President Trump has issued an executive order to shut down all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes within the federal government, declaring that the country will only recognise two genders and issuing an order restricting gender-affirming care to minors.

He has expressed plans to end birthright citizenship, and ramped up raids and deportation flights by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE). “People’s existence is being denied,” reflects Chavarria. “I hope to show the power of resilience and resistance, and really show us as beautiful as we really are in the face of such darkness, with this collection.” Chavarria sees Chicano culture as one of “preserving identity”. His community is one whose duty it is to honour their heritage while making their home, America, their own. He channels this approach as he subverts expected aesthetics with their marginalised foils—classic Americana with Mexican tradition, Chicano machismo with non-heteronormative flamboyance. He’s inspired by legacy designers of the American uniform: Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and Calvin Klein.

These houses worked to preserve American identity through heritage-inspired garments made accessible to the everyman. Some found unexpected fans in Black and brown shoppers, and were embraced and remixed by hip hop culture. They, like all brands, have significantly diversified their marketing in the last decade to stay relevant. But rather than repackaging a tired Americana for an America that doesn’t resemble it, Chavarria has uplifted and catered to his own multicultural, politically engaged community from the start.

Chavarria is one of the first and few designers to present a cast entirely comprising models of colour. When casting, he looks for unrefined characteristics: a walk that is “a little bit off”, an unexpected depth behind the eyes, and a sense of resilience. “I like people who have been through some kind of struggle and know how to come out on the other side, and use that struggle to their advantage to drive them forward,” he explains. Latina ‘It’ girls, maybe even icons in training, Paloma Elsesser and Gabbriette Bechtel, have graced his runway. So has Christiano Wennmann, a first-time runway model and pizza maker from New York City
Scarr’s Pizza. “There’s not a lot of Latinos in Paris. It feels good to represent,” he said on social media after walking the Tarantula runway in Paris.

Chavarria’s position as not only an American designer, but also a first-generation American designer primes him to make statements about his country’s politics to a global audience.
But while his peers, especially those in Europe, may seem immersed in creativity full-time, Chavarria doesn’t have the luxury of ever forgetting he is running a business. “If you’re an
American designer, you have your creative side and your business side, and they have to grow equally,” he says. The delicate dance of balancing art and commerce while staying true to his and the brand’s values is what has driven his work with Tinder, Adidas, Don Julio, Kendrick Lamar, and the Super Bowl—even the Human Rights Campaign.

If the list of brands and organisations that have collaborated with Chavarria feels long, the list of partnerships turned down by the brand is far longer. This selectivity is how an icon is refined. “Not everyone has to do what I’m doing,” says Chavarria, “but anything we do needs to have some kind of humanitarian effort in it.” In the current social climate, exacerbated by Trump’s presidency, even the biggest brands have more to gain from association with Chavarria than he does from them. Affiliation with a non-heteronormative, Latino-owned brand is a quick virtue signal for brands who seek to commodify diversity without saying or changing anything themselves.

Chavarria doesn’t allow it. “There are some businesses excited about it [humanitarian effort], and then there are other businesses that are afraid. They don’t want to make any kind of a statement. They just want to make a pretty picture. And those are the ones that I usually pass on.” Any lost potential income or relevance from rejecting inharmonious partnerships is made up for in Chavarria’s retained integrity, a commodity rarer than any accolade in the fashion industry.

The industry’s embrace of Chavarria while the United States government titles a social media video of ICE officials handcuffing undocumented Latino migrants before deportation “ASMR” is further proof that representation does not equal liberation. The designer recognises that the fashion week circuit is ultimately a bubble. Much of his inspiration, peers, and customers exist entirely outside of it. “More people are looking at fashion now than ever before. Fashion is tied to sports and music. Fashion reaches people all over the world in a way that even the news doesn’t. I really want to utilise my platform to bring awareness to people who may not be thinking about politics,” Chavarria says, who has plans to continue collaborating on film and music projects, upcoming songs with J Balvin included.

At the close of the Tarantula runway show in Paris, Chavarria emerged wearing a crewneck with the phrase “how we love is who we are” in gothic font. The sleeves were cut off, exposing his heavily tattooed arms. It’s a piece from his collaboration with the Human Rights Campaign, sponsored by dating app Tinder. The crewneck is US$200, the matching hat is US$95—two of the brand’s most accessibly priced items. The slogan, a rallying cry against the worldwide rise of homophobia, seen by countless people across fashion press, social media and, when worn in the wild, is priceless. Some might even say iconic.

Originally published in Dazed MENA Issue 01 | Order Here

Talent WILLY CHAVARRIA, creative producer FATIMA MOURAD, producer ANGÉLIQUE BOUREAU, casting director MISCHA NOTCUTT, models PALOMA ELSESSER, LINEISY MONTERO, TIFÉ ADEYEMI, JONATHAN GONZALEZ, ERIK MARTINEZ, CHRISTIANO WENNMANN, EMMANUEL CHINO SALAZAR, SHAID ANAYA, CHRIS COLVIN, hair stylist STÉPHANIE FAROUZE, make-up artist NISHA GULATI, production assistants JÉRÉMY LINDEMANN, LÉA HASBROUCQ, set designer THIBAULT MUÑOZ, set designer HUGO FERRETTO, styling assistants ISABELLA KAVANAGH, CHRISTELLE OWONA, 1st camera assistant THOMAS JARDIN, 2nd camera assistant PAUL NAOPHELL, hair stylist assistant NA ZHANG, make-up assistant SITARA