Willy Chavarria's Américan Dream

With a standout spring collection, the designer pays loving tribute to his community.

- Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

I' m disarmed by the way Willy Chavarria's name shows up in my email: bookended by red heart emojis. It's how his publicist has saved him in her phone, and soon I'm struck by how accurately it captures the iconoclastic designer. Chavarria, 57, is one of the biggest talents in fashion right now, but he's also warm, dreamy, and wise. He is grounded in the real world and all its beauty and discontents. "I think what's different about my approach to fashion," he tells me in a deep, gentle voice I want to explain everything to me, "is that it's still very much connected to reality. I want to acknowledge the reality we live in and point out the beautiful aspects of it in a romantic way." Chavarria's spring 2025 collection, titled América, celebrates the America of brown working people. It is inspired by labor, uniforms, working-class swagger, the exquisiteness of sleeves-rolled-up dignity. We always knew our elders were majestic, but here they are before us, as handsome and powerful as we always knew them to be! A consecration of the highway worker's or construction worker's Carhartt jacket; even cooler, a high-fashion consecration of a knockoff Carhartt jacket. Civil rights activism also made a cameo; every seat came with a copy of the Constitution, and Chavarria sported the logo of the American Civil Liberties Union on his cutoff sweatshirt as he took his bow. América makes a central claim to dignity.

Chavarria's work does not claim we have a right to dignity and beauty because we might be descendants of kings and queens. We are alive, and that alone is cause for glamour.