set design by Natalie Hoffman
photography by Boe Marion
styling by ulie Ragolia & Amy Bialek
Mexican-American designer Willy Chavarria’s eponymous label, which helaunched in 2015, is an amalgamation of race, politics, and sexuality.His lines are wide and oversized, but elegantly crafted. Inspired by hisWest Coast Chicano heritage, a sense of spirituality, and club culture,Chavarria's world is dark, dangerous, and alluring. Idris Balogun, founderof menswear brand WINNIE, was born to Nigerian immigrants in New Yorkand raised in London. He cut his teeth on Savile Row where he learned thefine art of fine tailoring. After working with Burberry and Tom Ford, hefounded his own label in 2018. In a fashion world ofconstantly shiftingtectonics, Chavarria and Balogun discuss theircircuitous arrival.
WILLY CHAVARRIA How did your show go?
IDRIS BALOGUN It went really well. It went crazier than I thought it was going to go, which is good, I guess. It was our first time doing a proper show in Paris and it was at the American Library. It was the first time they'd ever done a [fashion] show there. It was super community-based and it came out beautifully.
CHAVARRIA How did you figure out the American Library venue?
BALOGUN The collection was inspired by a poet named Ted Jones, who was an American expat in Paris. I was trying to figure out how to capture his spirit, and vibe, and ethos. He frequented the American Library. I reached out to them, they were down, and it just ended up happening.
CHAVARRIA We're going to do my next show in Brooklyn, which is a little high-risk because it's outside of the main fashion week map. It's going to be in the building where my studio is. It's pretty sick. It's an old, pre-war warehouse—just super raw. Everything about the show is changing constantly.
BALOGUN What's the inspiration for this collection that you're going to share?
CHAVARRIA The collection is called Safe From Harm. The inspiration is about caring for one another, and looking after one another, and being good to one another. That's the core feeling of it. There are a lot of familiar patterns, warm-feeling fabrics, and a lot of leather. There's a toughness and a softness with heavy masculinity, which I always like to play with.
BALOGUN I've always loved that idea of playing with masculinity and femininity, and how you can find one inside of the other. I think it's quite beautiful. I also love the cathedral aspect of your work. There's an aspect of Catholicism to it, it’s ecclesiastical.
CHAVARRIA It's heavy Catholicism is what it is. There's this phrase I remember daily from the Bible: “Always be joyous.” It is possible to hold joy in your heart even if you're not happy. You can be mourning the loss of someone you love and still hold joy in your heart. Humor is important to have.
BALOGUN I feel like you need to feed people a balance of emotion for them to really understand and unpack it. You can't fully get the message across without some kind of adjacent humor. That also makes it multidimensional because we're not always trying to just say one thing. It's important to have multiple ways for someone to attach themselves emotionally.
CHAVARRIA It's like communication in general. If you have a serious subject that you want to discuss—maybe something confrontational—when you include a level of humor, it’s much easier to ingest. Levity is very important in my work because otherwise, it'll just get too heavy.
BALOGUN What's your first experience with the sartorial? There is a lot of draping in your work, but there's a lot of tailoring too. There are a lot of plays on lapels and shoulders and structure.
CHAVARRIA I worked at Ralph Lauren where I did some tailoring. So I had a little bit of schooling on that, but it wasn't until, I'd say four seasons ago, that I started to fuck with it seriously. I have an atelier where I make samples first and work together on the fit,the tailoring and the patterns and all that. It was a conscious decision. I wanted to make sure that the positioning of my brand did not get stuck in a “lower tier” price point, so I wanted to make sure I had some of these finer pieces, nice gowns, and some of the more luxury products.
BALOGUN I remember seeing your work maybe two years ago, and you had extremely wide trousers back then. It was a play on proportions. It looked like a zoot suit but modernized. I read something about it having to do with LA Chicano culture. I think you kind of found a way to bridge those things.
CHAVARRIA That's why the word sartorial kind of throws me off because when you're thinking about fine tailoring, a pair of Dickies is the most beautifully fit and tailored pant there is, but that wouldn't be considered sartorial. When I hear sartorial, I think of suiting. But I guess you could say tailoring has always been a part of my work, even in denim.
BALOGUN Yeah I agree. I started from a super practical background on Savile Row. You start doing buttonholes, then you move on to pattern cutting, then you move on to cutting fabric. You do waistcoats, then you do blazers. It makes you look at the world in lines. I can appreciate a line that I feel is a risk on the designer's part—something new, something interpreted differently. When I saw your work years ago, I thought it was really something fresh. You have many different references, like a pair of Dickies, or the cultures that you were seeing growing up, or even Ralph Lauren, and subconsciously those things are working. I could see the tailoring, I could see the lines, I could see the play on volume, I could see the play on silhouette, I could see the play on fabric.
CHAVARRIA I think you have a more studied eye. You're coming from the inside out and I'm coming from the outside in.
BALOGUN It's interesting, from the inside looking out, coming through the buttonhole, it looks very well-versed. It looks like someone who understands the rules and is now breaking them. There's no one way to do it. You can come from any angle, but as long as the passion and the love is there, then you get the result you want.
CHAVARRIA I think so, and the craftsmanship has to be there. It has to be thoughtfully fit and thoughtfully constructed. All of that has to be a part of the game. In the last four seasons, I have spent a lot more time focusing on the craftsmanship and moving to the much better factories. Right now, my better stuff is produced in the US, but for this coming season, I'm looking for factories in Europe.
BALOGUN How has it been in Europe? When I first started, I was doing everything on my own. And then, I was doing things with two or three tailors in New York. I would teach them how to do certain things. But then it got really hard for me. It has to be a real passion project. Because in New York, some people are exceptional at what they do, but they're really hard to find, and they're really expensive. A regular tailor may not know how to do some horsehair stitching on a canvas, or know how to do pig stitches, or how to do fine finishes, stuff like that. So for me, it was just easier to move to Italy. People understood my language. I'm curious how it’s been for you to have an atelier in New York and try to push these fine tailoring nuances, these little finishes, and the craftsmanship.
CHAVARRIA It took some time to find the right people. And to tell you the truth, the best atelier that I could find is in Los Angeles. So, even though I'm in New York, my atelier is in LA. There's a lot of back and forth. So I'll go stay in LA and work with them on a collection. Once it gets going, I come back, start working on the other samples, come in, and make comments. A lot of constant texting all day, FaceTime meetings, and photos, but we've been getting by. Just this last spring is when we first started wholesaling. I was doing some wholesale in Asia only, and then to just a couple of stores in the US, but most of it was direct to consumers. Now that I'm getting into wholesale, the volume will be increasing, I'll be looking for manufacturers in Europe.
BALOGUN When did you start the brand?
CHAVARRIA 2015.
BALOGUN What made you move from LA to New York?
CHAVARRIA The fashion industry. I just ended up getting a job over here. I was working for a cycling apparel company in California. Before that, I was very involved in the club scene, and then I took a little pause on that and moved to this little coastal town and started doing triathlons, and I got this job with this cycling apparel company. I was out there in the middle of nowhere just getting in-touch with myself, and then Ralph Lauren launched RLX, their authentic athletic line, which was really sick at the time. At that time, nobody knew how to do athletic apparel, there was no Lululemon. RLX was contracting out, so they tapped this little cycling apparel company I was working with. At the time, “Polo sport” was my look. I was all like, Oh I got this. They hired me and brought me to New York.
BALOGUN Wow, that's crazy. That's very similar to my story. My first major fashion job was at Burberry, and I fell into that because I was doing an apprenticeship on Savile Row. I didn't know what fashion design was—I knew about tailoring. And then, Christopher Bailey, the creative director of Burberry came in and was like, “Do you wanna come and work for me?” and I was like, “What do you do?” And he was like, “I'm a designer at Burberry,” and I was like “What the hell does that mean?” So, you kind of roll with where the world takes you.
CHAVARRIA I really believe in that. I pray a lot and I do a lot of things like envisioning the future and manifesting.
BALOGUN It's like we fell into these things but we had different ways of going about it.
CHAVARRIA What was it like confronting the fashion industry—the dream versus the reality?
BALOGUN My first ever dream of fashion I had was watching the documentary about Oswald Boateng. He was a guy who started on Savile Row and ended up becoming the creative director for Givenchy in the ’90s and early 2000s, and I was like, this guy is so freaking cool, I wanna be just like this guy. Fast forward, I have my own brand and it's not the same. I spend so little time actually designing than I do putting out fires, like how am I gonna do the show? Where's the show gonna be? Oh, the venue says you need to do a talk if you want to do the show there. So, now I gotta do a talk, and I've never done a talk before. You've got to put on so many different hats. That's the reality, but in the dream you're like Yves Saint Laurent in some atelier, sitting at a desk, sketching away and coming up with crazy ideas. I'm very grateful for the time I do get to do that, but the reality is you do not use most of your time doing that.
CHAVARRIA Definitely not. (laughs) Having worked for companies before starting my own label I already knew what time it was when it came to the work involved. I mean, I was ready for it. I’m still ready for it even though it's grueling work—it's the only thing I know.
BALOGUN For sure, It's grueling work. Do you ever think you're gonna show in Paris?
CHAVARRIA Yeah, definitely, I think you have to show in Paris to be on the global stage. This city has supported me quite a bit, so it's still a very personal relationship I have with New York City and I like to mix it all together. But it's definitely been a plan to show in Paris. For a while, I was worried it would be too expensive to bring everything there, but I think that New York has just gotten so crazy, any place is cheaper than New York.
BALOGUN Do you use sustainable materials?
CHAVARRIA I do. I have used a material called Econyl, which is made of old fishing nets, ocean waste, and discarded carpet. The company works with Re-Nylon for Prada. They do a lot of luxury labels’ recycled stuff. They do stuff with corn, with mushrooms, and a lot of synthetics that are recycled from the plastics that wash up ashore. They will go out to these locations all over the world, collect the materials, and produce fabrics from it in their factory. But to be honest, my quantities at this stage don't have much effect on the environment.
BALOGUN We work with one factory in Mongolia that does all of our knitwear. They raise the sheep and they make the yarns there—it's super traceable and sustainable. But at our scale, it's pretty easy to do that. Even the factory we work with here in Veneto, I see everything being made. We go to Biello and we get dead-stock fabrics from these warehouses. At this point, sure it's sustainable, but it's like a survival tactic for us. At this stage, how can you not be sustainable?
CHAVARRIA Any small brand is operating as sustainably as they can. We are not making any excess—we are eating all the meat on the pig.
BALOGUN And we're using the bone for broth, and taking out the marrow and using it to make some other dish.
CHAVARRIA And then when it's done, we mash it up and make some sort of powder for our faces.
BALOGUN Exactly.
CHAVARRIA But, it's the bigger companies that have to really make a change.
BALOGUN I grew up in a first-generation Nigerian immigrant home where survival is sustainability. If you're not sustainable, you don't survive.
CHAVARRIA What is your advice for future generations?
BALOGUN Be more curious, and don't be afraid to ask questions. The younger generation, they want things to happen so much more quickly. They want things to be immediate. Everyone wants to be a professional overnight. In reality, that's not the way it works. I am so receptive to questions. People might have a different way of looking at things, like the way you look at tailoring, for example. It gives me a different way of thinking about it, and maybe now when I approach a pair of trousers or I approach a shirt, I'll say, “Let me try to look at it from Chavarria’s lens—from the outside-in.” If we all have that open line of communication, we can create more dialogue.
CHAVARRIA I think that patience and the willingness to learn and grow is a skill that they don't teach in school. Now, everyone is a creative director, and everyone is a fashion stylist. And you don't have to say that you're the best—you become the best through work. You'll work for nothing sometimes, and you'll do things at your own expense because you know that you're going to learn from it. I think that it's really good for young people to be more self-challenging, and don’t feel so entitled. Humble your ass. (laughs)
BALOGUN Last question: Do you have a favorite reading chair?
CHAVARRIA Yes. I'll mostly read at home before bed. Do you?
BALOGUN I do, but mine is not a chair in my home. Mine is usually in public. I love public reading. On the train, or a bench, or at a restaurant, or something like that. That's my favorite.
CHAVARRIA That’s super hot. Guys reading in public, that's like burning hot. I am way too distracted as a person to read outside. Maybe I'll hold a book on the train, just so I look like I'm reading on a train.