After an inspiring conversation days ago with Refinery29’s fashion director Irina Grechko at SCADstyle 2025, designer Willy Chavarria shared even more insights with ESSENCE behind the scenes. Born and raised in small-town Fresno, California, Chaviarria’s child-like wonder never went away, even now in his 50s. Right before the conversation, the designer’s fashion film was shown to the audience, invoking a spirit of artistry.
Tucked away after a swarm of students asked him tons of questions on his career to better their own, Chavarria, a CFDA Award-winning designer, reflected on his childhood, which is where his love of fashion was born. He felt a connection to style rather than capital F fashion. “I didn’t grow up around fashion, like the business part of it, or like the glamor of it that we see in magazines and on social media today,” he shared.
What did evoke his inventiveness were the people around him in his small town. He grew fascinated with the way people dressed to express their identities, who they were affiliated with, femininity and masculinity. People are still what energizes him. “I’m way more inspired walking around on the street in New York City on a Wednesday afternoon than I am at any fashion show,” he said.
The business of fashion was later revealed to him while working for Joe Boxer in the shipping department in the 1990s while enrolled at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. At Joe Boxer, he says he learned the background of what it takes to build a brand, make something, and sell it. That’s how he decided he would make a living working in fashion. Next, he interned at Nick Graham, which led to a design role. He then moved on to learning from household names like Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. Chavarria cut his teeth at Raph Lauren; he began at the company in 1999 he stayed for five years. The designer worked at Calvin Klein from 2001 to 2024 as the company’s senior vice president for design. At the former, he learned the philosophy of reaching as many people as possible through design, calling it a “massive company that has its legs rooted all over the world.”
Having a vision and being able to spread it throughout the world without it getting splintered or misconstrued was an impressive feat that Chavarria wanted to accomplish. At Ralph Lauren, he learned technical skills such as working with certain fabrics to mastering the art of tailoring was a given. His time at Ralph Lauren bleeds into the exquisite construction of the pieces Chavarria designs presently. For him, tailoring should have its own identity. “When you see it [tailoring], you know who made it. I try to make it just enough so that it’s cool but still wearable by a lot of people.” Chavarria was also a design director at American Eagle Outfitters after leaving Ralph Lauren. He went on to launch his namesake line in Fall 2015.
Marrying his roots with his talent for tailoring is a natural gift for Chavarria. Authenticity has never been an issue for him as he always felt conviction about the brand he wanted to carry out into the industry. He’s built more certainty in the brand identity by bringing in more people who share the same ideology of uplifting stifled voices. Translating this philosophy to the market in ways that can grow his business is what he and many designers like him find difficult.
He comes from a family who were involved in not just politics, but civil rights. In 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement grew within the difficulties of COVID-19, that’s the shift he noticed the most in the fashion industry.
“Black Lives Matter shook things up and forced people to open doors that were closed for so long. I’m a huge proponent of DEI and that was brilliant for even people like me, who took advantage of that. Since then, we’ve seen a lot of those doors closing, unfortunately, but I think that there was a moment in there that catapulted a lot of us within the industry and gave us opportunity,” he reflected.
This past season, Paris Fashion Week embodied that sentiment further as Chavarria’s eponymous label made a runway debut in the fashion capital of France. The show’s emotional connection to religion, having been in a Cathedral, pieces nodding to queerness, equality, and blue-collar workers speaks to the wider conversation of designers of color being part of the global fashion industry. As Chavarria said, doors have remained closed on designers of color.
“The old guard is not moving past an outdated ideology. When we see brands like mine or Wales Bonner, LaQuan Smith or Telfar killing it, I see people taking note. I see us creating new paths and streams of new talent. In so many, many aspects, we lead the way,” he said proudly.
The Paris debut was emotional for the designer as it fell during a transitional time with the second term of Donald Trump’s presidency. Chavarria was witnessing levels of hate within the political system and seeing it affect the people around him. Entitled “Tarantula,” the romantic, haunting, and spiritual show was born as a direct response.
“We put our hearts into the design, the story, and the way we touch people with our work. Being able to communicate our feelings about the American perspective as Americans of multiple ethnicities and sexualities felt so right. The world sees us in a poor light right now. It was moving to share our perspective on beauty, love, and inclusivity,” he revealed.
He said his brand is one of inclusion, an imperative message of dignity for all people. He utilizes his heritage throughout his design practice, but he shared that his greater philosophy is to touch all people—even those who may have different beliefs.
Although he may already have quite the cult following throughout New York and clearly in other parts of the world like Savannah, Georgia, Chavarria’s growth is continuous. He hopes to design at a European house one day and to scale his business large enough to eventually step away and venture into other passions such as film and music. He sees the two as a connector of people. Even as a child watching films like Carrie or The Exorcist at much too young an age, it was the theatrics that captivated him, not just the clothes.
