Dear Shaded Viewers,
Espace Niemeyer, with its swooping concrete brows and saucer-shaped stage ringed in cool green light, felt less like a runway than a chapel built for a congregation that dresses impeccably. That was the point. Willy Chavarria called this collection Comunión, and for fifty-some looks, joy was treated not as decoration but as doctrine — a deliberate, defiant choice made in “times of chaos and darkness,” as the show notes put it, rather than evidence of looking away from them.
Backstage and front row read like a guest list assembled by gravitational pull rather than publicist: Romeo Beckham and Jordan Clarkson walked alongside actor Gilbert Trejo and designer Bella Freud, while Maluma, Tove Lo, Gaspar Noé, and Haider Ackermann watched from the front row. But it was the clothes, and the unmistakable warmth radiating off this typically tough-guy brand, that did the talking.
Chavarria’s signature silhouette — that severe, padded-shoulder tailoring he’s built a decade-long vocabulary around — was softened and let loose this season. Suiting came oversized and slightly off-kilter: a periwinkle double-breasted suit worn open over a bare chest and cinched with a red waistband; a swaggering brown-and-green striped two-piece in liquid satin; a lavender blazer-and-cream-trouser combination so relaxed it nearly slid off the body. Tailoring here wasn’t armor, it was an embrace.
And then there were the boxer shorts — everywhere, peeking out from beneath suit trousers, layered under shorts, branded “WILLY” across elastic waistbands like a wink rather than a logo. It’s a detail with real backstory: Chavarria spent his time in Paris this summer riding out the heatwave in his underwear, and that very unglamorous, very human image found its way straight onto the runway. Boxers under tailoring, boxers under mesh basketball shorts, a full torso of ink left exposed beneath an unbuttoned blue leather jacket — the effect was less undress than confession, intimate garments worn proudly on the outside, as if there’s nothing left to hide from the people you trust. That’s Comunión in a nutshell: the idea that vulnerability, shared, becomes strength.
The palette told its own story of home — Willy Red, Purple Cielo, Plastic Pink, Copper Green, Celestial Blue, Lilac — colors the notes describe as worn but unmistakably alive, like a kitchen wall that’s seen forty years of Sunday dinners. Florals bloomed everywhere: a man’s wide-leg trouser printed with the kind of bouquet you’d find on a grandmother’s tablecloth, paired unapologetically with a black leather biker jacket and a red knit; a high-low organza gown scattered with painterly roses that moved like water down the runway; a fringed, hand-shredded tinsel skirt and matching dress in the same confetti-burst textile, equal parts couture and parade float. Each felt like an heirloom translated into fabric — comfort you could wear out the door.
The womenswear continued its steady, confident expansion: a butter-yellow shirtdress with a snakeskin clutch and ice-blue heels, sharp enough for a boardroom and loose enough for a dance floor; a pink polo bodysuit baring miles of leg with the kind of deadpan attitude only Chavarria’s casting can pull off; a lavender suede bomber thrown over wide cream trousers that made tailoring look like a Sunday stroll rather than a 9-to-5. The Willy Chavarria woman, as ever, looks like she could disarm a room and then comfort everyone in it.
Accessories carried real personality — a cobalt top-handle bag the size of a Sunday grocery haul, a sage suede slouch bag, a crocodile-embossed burgundy clutch — and the season’s headline collaboration, the first chapter of a Willy Chavarria x UGG® partnership, debuted quietly but confidently underfoot: the unisex Guard Boot, the Biker, and the plush Hotel Chavarria Slipper, bridging biker-jacket grit with shearling comfort in a way that felt entirely earned rather than bolted on.
By the time Chavarria came out for his bow — black suit, gold chains, aviators, a hand pressed flat to his chest in genuine gratitude — the room was on its feet, and the message landed exactly as intended. This wasn’t a collection asking to be admired from a careful distance. It was an invitation: gather close, wear your colors loud, let your boxers show if you want to, and call the whole beautiful mess a communion. Few shows this season have made joy look like such serious, considered work — and fewer still have made it feel this contagious.
Later,
Diane
