As guests filed in, gate crashers and all (and there were lots), a group of soccer players-cum-models were running laps around the catwalk. Their coach hustling them on. Glistening brown bodies misting in sweat. It felt like an intrusion as we watched them huddle for a team pow wow. Dressed in Hummel athletic gear, a Danish athletic brand who partnered with Willy Chavarria to sponsor New York City soccer players with documented an undocumented citizenship, they walked with poise, as if the catwalk were a college track. Then the show began.
Albeit a hard transition, oversized streetwear enveloped the runway. As we went from the field to 1990. Baggy silhouettes in denim with low hanging pants and Timberland’s machismo’ed their way to the front. Sheer cut off tops sat on torsos and embroidered crosses ornamented backs.
The correlation between the opening act and the collection wasn’t seamless, but the message was clear. Representation is needed. Chavarria does not conform. His castings are not of the traditional sunken face, rocker body type either. His men are full-blooded, full-boned Chicano. And his clothes are intended for such. Willy Chavarria may not be around forever, but his platform is ready and his spotlight set.
Embracing both tradition and subversion, the field and the street, codified notions of taste and aspiration, crossing British cultures and class boundaries, is both wryly looked at and celebrated in the collection.
Icons meet icons for the Y-3 Fall/Winter 2019 collection, in which adidas and Yohji Yamamoto reinterpret their individual codes through the lens of one another.
The Fall/Winter 2019 collection collides heritage with the bold and psychedelic, as British classicism is modernized for the Stella man and fused with pop prints and vivid color.
“The more beautiful the sky, the more hopeless the neighborhood.”
Cover feat. Jhona Burjack at Next Models shot by Kito Muñoz
“And even if we change neighborhoods, cities or countries, we always carry with us that sense of personal transformation that a piece of land, with its buildings, parks, bars, and people, has given us. We are almost certain to hang on to a sense of gratitude and nostalgia for it.”
