“She’s a woman who’s confident,” said Willy Chavarria, before pausing abruptly. “No, that sounds so ‘everybody says that.’”
The 2024 CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year was searching for the right words to describe the intended customer for his first womenswear collection, which he showed on Saturday at a “pre-sale” event at Printemps in New York. (He first previewed several pieces from the line in Paris in June.)
“It’s the woman who owns herself, who owns her power, owns her sensuality, isn’t afraid to wear color, and doesn’t want to disappear into the background,” he continued.
Chavarria presented his Spring/Summer 2026 collection in a salon-style reception intended to evoke “the original couture shows,” as the invite put it, with VIP clients and members of the media invited to a private viewing “complete with order cards and catalogues.” The collection has already been picked up by Bergdorf Goodman, Dover Street Market, Net-a-Porter and Printemps, among others, and is set to land in stores in January 2026.
Each seat featured a pencil and a pamphlet of 14 numbered looks (17 were shown in total), while models walked through Printemps’ “red room” — a mirrored, floral-filled gallery — carrying cards with the corresponding numbers so orders could be placed seamlessly. One model, in a wide-brimmed hat with a red bow and a belted satin-silk trench dress, clutched a martini glass. The looks spanned “easy-to-wear street wear … some more chic evening pieces” and couture, which were put on display in the Printemps’ windows, he said. Prices range from $250 for a women’s jersey to $650 for denim, $1,850 for dresses and $2,000 for leather.
It is, as Chavarria put it, his first — though “not aggressive” — expansion into womenswear. It’s also a response to department stores — which still have clout even in their diminished state — seeking a broader offering from one of New York’s most celebrated designers. He said he initially opened the collection to “make a statement” but ended up with “more sales than expected.”
“But the intention is to go in with a market that is small and let it grow, because I want to do the same with women’s, as I’ve done in men’s, which is let it happen on its own,” he added.
Accessories were also part of the edit: a range of purses, including a bolero bag in glazed cow skin with dangling gold keys and what Chavarria dubbed a “big ass clutch” in distressed chocolate cow skin, will arrive at Printemps.
Many of the looks rework his Chicano-inspired menswear: a shirt emblazoned with “sad mami” in his bold gothic lettering mirrors a previous menswear piece reading “sad papi.”
“We started taking a lot of pieces that are men’s pieces and turning them into women’s pieces,” said Rebeca Mendoza, Chavarria’s design director. “A perfect example is … we had a men’s crop trench for Autumn/Winter ’25 that we loved. We had it on the runway, and we were like, what if we took this piece and then added a skirt to it and made it into a dress?”
The presentation, stripped of activist messaging or imagery and serving as a test of Chavarria’s commercial reach, marked a clear shift from Chavarria’s politically-charged shows. In Paris this June, he staged 35 men kneeling in white uniforms to protest US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, evoking immigrants detained and sent to high-security prisons in El Salvador. And in September 2024, his Spring 2025 collection, titled América, featured inverted American flags and handed guests copies of the US Constitution supplied by the ACLU.