Between Light and Shadow: Inside the Chiaroscuro of Willy Chavarria’s Fall/Winter 2025 Runway
By Parthivee Mukherji
At Paris Men’s Fashion Week, inside the hallowed halls of the American Cathedral,
the world watched as Willy Chavarria turned his runway into a pulpit – not of faith,
but of identity, migration, and defiant beauty. Willy Chavarria’s Fall/Winter 2025
collection, “Tarantula” was not just a of silhouettes and fabrics – it was an ode to
belonging, ode to being othered, ode to reclaiming diversity with pride.
The tarantula – Chavarria’s chosen emblem – is a creature often misunderstood – it
is a creature, gentle in nature, but feared by those who fail to understand it. The
metaphor feels deeply personal. The show was entitled Tarantula after a This Mortal
Coil song of the same name that left its mark on a teenage Chavarria. “It’s about this
gentle creature doing its own thing, yet it’s vilified – a tarantula doesn’t actually do
anything until you provoke it,” he says. The show also played upon the chiaroscuro
technique of light and dark, exploring opposing or contradictory themes such as
“tough and tender; American and European. ‘Tarantula’; expresses bold chiaroscuro
that depicts the beauty of existence, resistance, and persistence”; according to the
show notes. In these comparisons, he captured the immigrant condition — a being
misread, mistranslated, yet resilient.
The son of an Irish American mother and a Mexican American father, Chavarria has
been steadfast in his commitment to driving fashion as social activism since the
launch of his New York-based eponymous label in 2015. But in Paris, he elevated his
Chicano roots from personal story to universal language. The collection became a
tapestry of global belonging — one stitched with the dreams, sacrifices, and
contradictions of the immigrant experience.
The collection pulls from a rich array of references: blood-red velvet, sable black
wools, broad-shouldered “Sunday suits,” cowboy hats, sleek tailoring, and pieces
from his collaboration with Adidas. The fabrics conjure the theatrical, but the
silhouettes root themselves in Chicano sartorial history—zoot suits, workwear,
church Sunday formality—all reframed. The palette alternated between velvet-rich
deep tones and electric greens, combining sportswear with tailor-made, silks with
worker’s canvas, evoking what Chavarria called “a necessary in-between.” This in-
between is itself symbolic of the immigrant condition—neither fully one thing nor
another, yet the two combined make something new.
Chavarria has always focused on enlisting personas from his community to walk his
shows – pioneering ‘street-casting’ even before it was a thing. To carry this extremely
personal agenda, the designer included both regulars from his New York shows, as
well as models who were street-casted in Paris. He had the big-hitting names like
Paloma Elesesser, Indya Moore, and the Colombian superstar J Balvin, who walked
the runway and also performed live at intermission. “If you are a woman, a queer
person, a trans person, a person of colour or a poor person – those are the people I
really love to cast,” Chavarria explains. The clothes do not wear the models in
Chavarria’s world – the models embody them and the designs, in turn, are brought to
life.it is kind of relieving to see inclusivity not stuffed into corners, but honest and fully
fleshed out – it shows how important and integral it is to the designer and his
designs.
Chavarria is a self-confessed eBay addict; during an interview, everything he was
wore was sourced from the online auction platform. In a fun self-sustaining move, he
started buying his own archival pieces from eBay and then included them in his
runway show. “This philosophy of overconsumption is just grotesque. So, let’s
celebrate some of the older stuff!” he muses. “And by revisiting older pieces with
each collection it means that the styles and the energy have a continuity from
season to season.” Fittingly, a green velvet suit from the collection was listed for sale
on eBay immediately following the show, with all proceeds going to California
Community Foundation’s Wildlife Recovery Fund.
As the show drew to an end, Chavarria led his team, his community, down the aisle
of the church, wearing a T-shirt from his collaboration with Tinder and The Human
Rights Campaign, which had, “How we love is who we are” emblazoned across his
chest (and heart). And it so perfectly sums up what Willy Chavarria is all about – a
deft designer with a palpable sensitivity towards his service to the greater
humankind. “It is so incredibly important to share the beauty of identity while so
many of our identities are under attack,” he pressed. “We really need to use fashion
to make sure we don’t forget what is really important.” Chavarria introduced us to his
world, and may his ferocious message reverberate far beyond the fabrics of fashion.