NYFW: Willy Chavarria Spring Summer 2022

For New York Fashion Week Spring-Summer 2022, designer Willy Chavarria juxtaposed glamour against grit. Chavarria, who is known for his unique take on street style fashion, presented exaggerated and oversized silhouettes. The collection, titled Cut Deep, was a reminder that even after all the anguish of New York Fashion Week, there was still hope to be had for what fashion is and could be. Chavarria, who was recently appointed senior director of menswear design at Calvin Klein, used this show as an opportunity to remind us of how he got the job in the first place.

Willy Chavarria serves exaggerated proportions at NYFW

Chavarria’s approach to fashion is never ostentatious or eccentric, but, rather, he draws on his own experiences from his youth of seeing people wear baggy pants and oversized shirts and transforms them into a contemporary streetwear silhouette. He takes a democratized approach to fashion, opting for the use of the famed Astor Place Hairstylists barbershop as the venue for his show. The legendary barbershop was very close to being a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic, until a buyer swept in at the last minute and saved it. Having a fashion show there, Chavarria’s first since the pandemic, was living evidence that New York City and Fashion Week was back, bold, and beautiful.

Exaggerated proportions were the defining element of this collection with waist high pants hitting the floor and “short” sleeve shirts with sleeves almost hitting the models’ wrists. Reality was amplified to volumes that was over-the-top in size, but subtle in approach with approachable colors and pieces that could’ve walked off the runway into any modern street style scene. Workwear inspired washes and fabrications also spoke to the concept of this collection being for everyone. In Chavarria’s amplified reality, everyone was included.