Willy Chavarria's Paris Debut Was Romantic, Resilient and Real
The back-to-back CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year commanded Europe’s greatest fashion stage with a tantalizing show about resistance and finesse, titled “Tarantula.”
On Friday evening, at The American Cathedral in Paris, Mexican-American menswear designer Willy Chavarria made his Paris Fashion Week debut—a fitting locale for the back-to-back CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year’s transatlantic entrance, to say the least.
Amid the venue’s holy walls, Chavarria uncovered a Fall 2025 collection, titled “Tarantula,” powered by his distinctive vision: one that materializes his own historically disadvantaged signifiers—his queerness, his biracial identity as the descendant of an Irish-American mother and a Mexican-American father, and his working-class upbringing among immigrant farmers in California’s San Joaquin Valley—and makes people with the same experiences feel awe-inspired.
Romance ran rampant on Chavarria’s runway, with rose-adorned blazers, flower-powered Western hats and sensual takes on suiting. Mid-show, J Balvin emerged in a bow-tied tux to perform an intimate solo. His partner, Valentina Ferrer, who recently co-starred in Chavarria’s Fall 2024 campaign alongside her Colombian reggaeton lover, watched with an endearing eye from backstage.
Across workwear and sportswear, the designer’s distinctly emboldened proportions were lifted by Italian fabrics, including silks, velvets, bouclé and double-faced cashmere. The color palette—a Baroque mixture of opulent golds, vivid blues, strong crimson and majestic plum—glowed on the designer’s eclectic cast, which, per usual, was filled with muscle men, short guys, tall fellas, men in their 40s and 50s, guys with hair down to their lower backs, and non-binary individuals that were mostly street-cast in New York and Paris.
Backstage, one model, who works as a pizza boy in New York City by day, explained that Chavarria’s team scouted him through a viral video of him cheffing up a fresh pie at Scarr’s in the Lower East Side. “It’s incredible to be part of such a big movement. There’s not a lot of Latinos in Paris, so it feels good to represent,” he said. “This is my first time on any runway.” Chavarria’s shows are so impactful because of stories like these. His muses are very much real people.
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Elsewhere, Chavarria presented his second collaboration with adidas, which included a ’90s-inspired lifestyle collection for men and women, with combat boot-inspired sneakers. The designer worked with Return to Vendor, the first mono-material label that creates fully recyclable products with reclaimed finishing nets, to create eyewear; and he teamed up with South Central Project to create four silk scarves spotlighting photographer Carlos Jaramillo’s photo essay, Illumine Tu Camino.
Altogether, the collection’s several acts built a ubiquitous wardrobe shaped by resistance, charoscuro and finesse. “When the thunder breaks, it breaks for you and me,” Chavarria’s show notes read. “Under furled heavens, my kiss is as soft and gentle as the hair of a tarantula.” Well, like a tarantula, Chavarria’s Paris debut sent tantalizing chills down the cathedral’s spines.
See Willy Chavarria’s Fall/Winter 2025 collection in the gallery above, and stay tuned to Hypebeast for more Paris Fashion Week coverage.
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