Story originally published in HERO 33.

For FW25, Willy Chavarria took us to church. Celebrating his brand’s tenth anniversary by relocating from the New York to Paris schedule, inside the capital’s American Cathedral – the first US church established outside of the States in 1814 – bloodred roses poured from the altar and hundreds of candelabras flickered with chiaroscuro drama. Titled Tarantula, the collection was a melting pot of LatinoAmericana: slouching velvet tuxedos with 1950s pointed collared shirts, giant corsages, rosary beads, widebrimmed Stetsons and West Coast tracksuits. The show closed with Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s urgent sermon to Donald Trump, imploring the US President to “have mercy” on immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community.

As the son of an Irish-American mother and a Mexican-American father, Chavarria has remained steadfast in his devotion to penning diverse stories of American identity, inspired by his Chicano upbringing in Los Angeles. Uncompromising in his politics, Chavarria’s forthright approach to design has never felt as palpable or as necessary as it does today. Friend, icon and fellow West-Coaster Rick Owens echoes Chavarria’s messaging – only this time delivered with distorted gothic glamour. As two of the most visionary minds working today, the pair share an unwavering approach to disruption through design.

Rick Owens: I want to talk about Fresno. When was the last time you were in Fresno?
Willy Chavarria: I haven’t been back in a while, but it’s funny because the town I’m from is Huron. And you’re from…

RO: Porterville. 
WC: Huron is about half the size of Porterville, and it’s about 45 minutes south of Fresno. I did live in Fresno, but I also lived in Huron, which is a tiny little place in California. Rick, we both come from these very similar rural, agricultural, tiny places – I would love to hear about your experience and tell you about mine.

RO: Well, you’re so connected to your heritage and I’m kind of not. I’m not exactly sure how that happened. We didn’t have any Mexican family in Porterville because my dad was from Philadelphia, he went to Mexico as an English teacher and that’s where he met my mom, they eloped and he brought her to the States. Mom didn’t speak English, she was one of five brothers and sisters and she was the only one who ever moved away. They all still live in Puebla in the same block. I was born in Porterville, mom would take me to kindergarten, and then she would stay to help the teacher because that’s just the kind of person that she was. So she and I learned English together because Spanish was my first language with her. She was very smart. Because my father spoke Spanish, he ended up working for the social welfare system in Porterville and he would go to people’s houses to interview them to see if they qualified for benefits. His job was to guard the system from fraud, so he approached people with suspicion, and I feel like he had a very cynical view of humanity after that experience. He also did bilingual translating for the court system, defending Latino immigrant farm workers who couldn’t speak English. We had a Latin community connected to the church, but it was very mixed. So as a result, I didn’t really connect with the Latin culture. It wasn’t like we belonged to a Latino community, we didn’t have any Latino family because they were all in Mexico and we visited once every five years, or something. So, I grew up very white. [laughs] That’s my background, what about yours?
WC: I’ll tell you about my background – the next component of this conversation would be how we harvested ourselves to thrive and grow within that tiny world we existed in and then bust out of it. My father’s family were migrant farm workers but they had kind of settled into this town, Huron. My grandfather had planted roots there and my family built apartments for farm workers to live in and opened a little grocery store in the town. When desegregation happened before I was born, the white high school in Kalinga and the Mexican high school in Huron joined the same high school, so then they were integrated. But there was still crazy racism between the whites and the Mexicans, and that’s where my white mother from Kalinga met my Mexican father. She hates it when I tell this story, but I think it’s so beautiful and so romantic, she would sneak out of her bedroom window and ride her bicycle at night from Kalinga to Huron and sneak into my father’s window. They were having this scandalous affair until I came about…

RO: And then it was glorious.
WC: I think it’s so fucking cool, but it was a hoo-ha because she was with child and back then abortion was not easy. Thank God it didn’t happen because I’m around now, but she ended up moving in with my father’s family and they couldn’t stand her for the first year. She stuck it out, she’s a very humble person. She learned Spanish and woke up with the women every morning at 4am to make the tacos to give to the farm workers before they went out to the field. A year later she became a very close part of the family, and now she’s one of the leaders in the family.

RO: That’s lovely. So your mom had tenacity too.
WC: For sure, and still does. I really admire her, I admire both my parents now.

RO: Do you go to Mexico? Do you have family in Mexico?
WC: When my grandmother was alive I would go with her and my father and it was beautiful. Rosario is the small town where she’s from, and it was just crumbling churches and little colourful markets, but I haven’t been in a while. Growing up in that environment felt very repressive throughout my childhood. As soon as I was seventeen, I bolted out of there and went to San Francisco. [laughs] That’s when I started to come out of my shell. When I see Huron now and when I visit now, it has a different dimension to it. I want to go and do photoshoots there and I want to do a documentary there, now I see it with new eyes and it’s easier for me to spot the beauty in it not living there as a child anymore.

“I always reference you as somebody who’s been able to stand true to your convictions and deliver something so signature, so strong, powerful, beautiful and cool as fuck…”

RO: I went back to Porterville, I hadn’t been since I was in my 20s. I always said, “Why would I want to go to a place where I felt uncomfortable?” But I completely miscalculated how great it would feel to go back at full power as an adult. You kind of feel like you won, and it was the most delicious feeling. It wasn’t gloating, there was something so satisfying about going there in control of my life and I felt great peace and affection for it, which I couldn’t really understand because it was a hotbed of conservative, bigoted values, and it still is – there were Trump posters on front lawns. When was the first time you realised that there was a place for you in the world and that you could get out?
WC: It was when I was living in San Francisco.

RO: You’d already gotten out then. When you were in Huron there must have been some desperate moments where you felt out of place?
WC: Well, I felt that way my entire life. As long as I can remember, even as a small child, I remember feeling like I wasn’t a part of this world. I just didn’t belong there. I went through periods of being angry and frustrated about it, depressed and suicidal, all of those things throughout my growing up. I did this really interesting thing where I was so depressed before starting high school that I said, “I’m going to create a character that is going to exist while I’m going to school.” And I did that, I became this character that was gregarious, outgoing and a little ridiculous, and going into this other world sustained me through high school. But as soon as it was over, Rick, I just packed up my bags and left, and thank God this was pre-internet because I could just disappear and nobody had my number. I went to San Francisco and it was like an open book. I did get a little crazy during that time but I just expanded myself, I was immersed in music, the club scene and the nightlife. I really discovered myself through music, fashion and dancing – I felt freedom I had never felt. That is when I learned to love who I am. I’m still working on it every day but I realised this is somebody I really want to be with for the rest of my life. Man, from then on it’s been the journey that it is. How about you?

RO: I remember in high school, me and my friend would go in her car on weekends to Bakersfield’s only gay bar, The Basement. I would keep getting kicked out and I would just have to hang out in the parking lot with the other underage kids, which actually turned out fine. [laughs] I found my way in high school, were you able to do that, or did you have to wait until after high school?
WC: I did some secret experimentation in high school and I have a strong feeling I went to that same club in Bakersfield.

RO: Well, there’s only one! I tell this story a lot about myself, how one of the first things that liberated me was going to Kmart and finding David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album cover. That released me, it kind of scared me, excited me and disturbed me, but that was the trigger where I thought, “Oh my god, monster glamour. I’m going to find my way, there’s a future for me.” Was there something like that for you when you were young?
WC: Music was extremely important back then.

RO: What did you listen to?
WC: Well, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust was my album. I was listening to a lot of Siouxsie Sioux, Siouxsie and the Banshees, a lot of early Culture Club. Did you ever go to Tower Records in Fresno?

RO: My first boyfriend worked at Tower Records, but it was in Bakersfield, not Fresno. Fresno is where I went to see David Bowie’s Station to Station tour.
WC: Oh, wow. My first concert was Adam and the Ants with Annabella Lwin.

“David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust was my album. I was listening to a lot of Siouxsie Sioux, Siouxsie and the Banshees, a lot of early Culture Club.”

RO: That was such an inventive moment. Malcolm McLaren was such a fucking genius, he was so great.
WC: Incredible. I still listen to Madam Butterfly, it’s one of my favourite tracks of all time. Tower Records was like church for me. They had the imports section where you would go and find New Order, and The Sisters of Mercy – those Sisters of Mercy albums, oh my god. Duran Duran before it was big.

RO: I used The Sisters of Mercy a couple of seasons ago in a runway show and I thought, “Is this too corny?” But then I realised, “God, these kids have never heard of Sisters of Mercy,” and it felt really good pounding out my favourite Sisters of Mercy song under such different conditions than when I was first listening to it. It was so satisfying. I reached out to the singer of Sisters of Mercy, I got a hold of him and I asked if I could use that song. Then afterwards, his wife got back to me and she said, “Andrew [Eldritch] was chuffed about the way you used his song.” And then I had to Google ‘chuffed’. [both laugh]
WC: Rick, I wanted to thank you for having my husband and I over to your home in Paris.

RO: Oh, it was the least I could do. I was happy to welcome you, Michèle [Lamy] and I have enjoyed your work so much and we have been enthusiastic followers for I don’t know how many years. When did you start the runway shows in New York?
WC: I’ve been doing them for a while but I think they just recently started getting attention. As my brand has grown, I’ve been able to do bigger presentations, so I think that’s what’s activated more attention, but thank you. You and Michèle, you guys are both so incredible. I love everything that you do, I’m just such a huge fan. There aren’t too many people that I cite as being incredible fashion designers right now, and I always reference you as somebody who’s been able to stand true to your convictions and deliver something so signature, so strong, powerful, beautiful and cool as fuck and still hold it down, because it’s a thing running these businesses.

RO: It is. I was very lucky to meet fantastic partners at the beginning who are now my CEO and head of distribution. They found me and we’ve been together since the beginning, and that’s very unusual in this industry, to stick with people. I’m sure at the beginning, if I’d gone to Givenchy or something, I would have done my three years, and then would have just gone into oblivion without anybody to protect me. But they always found enough in my collections to sell to people so we could survive no matter where my flights of fancy took me. I’ve been incredibly lucky and I certainly don’t take the credit myself, because it takes another talent to guide a fashion business through all the danger zones. Talent is just not enough and a creative vision is not enough, it takes somebody who knows how to manoeuvre through the wilderness of actually producing, manufacturing and delivering clothes. It’s such a huge thing.
WC: It’s huge you’re right, it takes talent. It takes somebody very specific to that mindset and somebody who thrives in that work.

RO: Which is almost the opposite of our mindset, because it takes so much attention to detail and following up on minutia that I don’t have the patience for. Sometimes I think that a lot of it is based on acting defensively. You have to always have the deadlines looming, the caution signals on the business side of it, but then on the creative side of it, you have to be fucking fearless. You have to see the rules and just want to obliterate them. It’s almost these two separate talents that need to combine. I don’t know how people do it, it’s still a mystery to me.
WC: You’re so right. I first realised this because I have worked for big companies.

RO: That’s what I wanted to ask you about because you were raised in that environment, in the system. I had no clue when I started, I was in Los Angeles on Hollywood Boulevard doing stuff by myself with one sewer. Then all of a sudden, I was showing in New York. But you have been in the system.
WC: I was in the system.

RO: Oh my god. When did you start that? What was your first job in the New York fashion industry?
WC: Well, remember those crazy times I mentioned in San Francisco? They got really crazy, and I had to haul my ass out of there and go live in Pismo Beach. I went from obliterating myself to doing triathlons, purifying my system and cleaning myself up basically.

“It’s important for us to really celebrate the expression of identity and celebrate who we are at a time when people are trying to take that away from us.”

RO: That takes strength of character.
WC: Girl, I don’t know where it came from. I rebirthed myself and I ended up getting a job at a cycling apparel manufacturer that was one of two in the United States, I got a job designing cycling apparel.

RO: Had you learned how to do that? Or did you just pick it up? Or did you fake it?
WC: I faked it.

RO: Good for you.
WC: I remember the first day sitting down at the computer, not knowing how to turn it on and trying to wing it. I figured it out. Ralph Lauren launched their RLX line, which was authentic athletic apparel done by Ralph Lauren. No one at Ralph Lauren had any idea what they were doing, so they were contracting out to these companies that would do different types of athletic apparel. They contacted this little company I was working for and I started working with them, I was designing their cycling apparel for the RLX line. Then they moved my ass to New York and hired me at Ralph Lauren. So that was my first job in New York.

RO: That’s fantastic. My fair lady. [both laugh]
WC: I was! I hated New York, I was like, “The fuck is this place?”

RO: What? Really?!
WC: It was busy and you had to wait in line like 40 minutes to get a filthy little salad for $25. [laughs] It was a culture shock, but now I love it – I’m one with the city. My first apartment was on Gramercy Park with keys to the park.

RO: Oh, wow.
WC: I had no idea what I had, I got it on Craigslist and my next-door neighbour was Thierry Mugler.

RO: Oh my god, that is hilarious.
WC: It was amazing. He never gave me the time of day but he always fascinated me. So, I came up in the system and I learned the ins and outs of it. Then, one day, my husband opened a little store in New York. I’ve been with my husband, David, for 24 years. I was buying so much shit for Ralph and these companies I was working for, I had a huge vintage collection. We opened a little shop on Sullivan Street in New York selling all this vintage stuff and it was really cute. I did a little line of shoes and we started doing really basic stuff like button-down shirts and things that were very ‘Ralphy’. The store was great and then my husband decided to go into jewellery and follow his career. I was like, “I’m sick of these button-down collared shirts, I’m going to try something new and I’m going to do a little Willy Chavarria line.” I still love that line when I look back on it, it was just very simple cashmere wool, a coat, a shirt, a pant, everything in the same fabric.

RO: Where were you manufacturing?
WC: I was doing all of that in New York.

RO: Skilled labour in New York seems hard to find.
WC: It is hard to find but that was one of the virtues of me working at Ralph, I knew these little hidden gems. I knew where you could get amazing Japanese fabrics, I kind of had that in so I was able to do those things. Nobody was buying that stuff in my store, because it was expensive. But the Japanese came in and they loved it, so I started wholesaling it to the Japanese market, which is where I started my business.

RO: Did you work with a showroom there? How did that work?
WC: There’s a company that owns a lot of Japanese stores, so I was working with them directly at first, then I was approached by a showroom and I started working with them. Then I changed the name of the store, I painted everything white and painted ‘Willy Chavarria’ on the outside. That was in 2015 and that’s when it all happened. It’s fascinating and incredible that you were able to build completely separate from the system. Have you ever shown anywhere but Paris?

RO: I had my first two shows in New York. The only reason I did shows to start with is because I was doing showrooms with my partners, we would have a little showroom in New York and in Paris but we would just sell to buyers. There was never any plan to do a runway, but then after 2001 US Vogue started a programme to support young designers and they offered a runway show. They would choose a couple of designers a season, they chose Rick Owens, a lady called Behnaz Sarafpour, and Zac Posen won in 2002. I was thinking, “Well, I don’t think my aesthetic can really last for very long on a runway. You have to be a lot more exciting than me, so I risk burning out my little thing if I expose it that way, if I just sell it in stores it won’t be under the scrutiny of having to change a lot. But if I do runway, then I run the risk of not being exciting enough to be able to sustain a business.” But I thought, “Fuck it. You only get this offer once in a lifetime,” so I did it and Vogue sponsored it. I did that one for Fall Women’s and then I did Spring Women’s in New York. From there, I just went to Paris. The reason I went to Paris was because I had an excuse. I had taken the artistic director role at Revillon which was a fur house, it also gave the Parisians an excuse to accept me. If I had come as an American on my own, I don’t think it would have worked, but the fact that I was associated with a very old name that people kind of remembered validated me. I think that’s how I snuck in.
WC: Wow, that’s interesting. Although, I can’t imagine Paris not embracing you.

“I definitely incorporate the fact that I’m Latino into so much of my work.”

RO: But you’ve been embraced by the industry in New York, haven’t you? Do you feel that you have received enough support from them?
WC: I definitely do. I feel a great closeness with the industry in New York, and I feel a very great closeness with the city.

RO: That’s nice, I love that.
WC: You know what it’s like, to have that support is everything. I’ve got support from the CFDA, I’ve developed great relationships very naturally and for that, I will always feel like a New York designer. I’ll always feel like New York is my grounding place, and I’ll show in New York again. But as I’m expanding into more global territories, showing in Paris resonates in a way that is just very different from New York.

RO: It really is.
WC: It’s a different vibe. Rick, I did not realise how powerful it was going to be. I was just running along doing my thing thinking, “OK, now I’ll show in Paris, and here we go.” But it’s incredibly powerful there. The way people look at fashion and think fashion and drink fashion, it’s a serious part of the culture. In New York, it’s a Wall Street city over here, you know? There’s fashion, but there’s also a bunch of other stuff. I think the passion that exists in Paris is so powerful. All the buyers are there and there’s much more of a global presence when you’re showing there. It’s a little addictive.

RO: I always suspected that if I had stayed showing in New York, I would have eventually become a little bit sidelined as the New York weirdo. Whereas in Paris, there’s a world of weirdos. I felt that in Paris, perversity or weirdness is almost a requirement more than it is in New York. In a way, showing in Paris probably exoticised me to the Americans and being an American exoticised me to the Europeans. It worked out for me. For you, it’s a little different because your fashion and your story are so connected with the Latino and American experience. It’s a wonderful statement that you’re making in America, and I love that. Of course, it’s a story that works anywhere but I do love it in New York. We love you in Paris, too. So, anywhere you want to show, I think it’s a good idea. [laughs]
WC: I definitely incorporate the fact that I’m Latino into so much of my work. It’s a component of the expression, it’s not the full expression. The full expression is really about embracing and celebrating identity. I like to highlight the aspects of identity that are oppressed or under attack. I think given where we are right now, it’s important for us to really celebrate the expression of identity and celebrate who we are at a time when people are trying to take that away from us.

models MEHDI ABOUZAID, JONATHAN GONZALEZ and ERIK LEMUSCALDERON at NEXT NEW YORK and CHRISTIANO WENNMANN; grooming CHARLIE LE MINDU; casting BRENT CHUA; photography assistant DIEGO DONIVAL; fashion assistant HILTON PALMER; grooming assistant NATALIA BORGES; digital tech KATIE HAWTHORN; lighting tech ROWAN LIEBRUM; location ROOT STUDIOS