Lifestyle

Willy Chavarria Is a Unisex Designer Making Undergarments His Way

Published

10 months ago

January 23, 2025

Willy Chavarria Is a Unisex Designer Making Undergarments His Way

One of the first things designers aim for when they achieve a bit of commercial success is to get into underwear. As long as there are M.B.A.s, the Calvin Klein business model will be a subject of study, and it is the rare designer who does not, at some point, figure out that while dressing stars and making glamorous runway clothes are great for one’s image, the margins are in skivvies.

Consider Willy Chavarria. Almost a decade after starting his namesake label in 2015, Mr. Chavarria, a former senior vice president of design at Calvin Klein, became a freshly anointed fashion star in his mid-50s by winning back-to-back men’s wear Designer of the Year awards from the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2023 and 2024.

Late last year, he introduced the first line of men’s undergarments for his brand. (Although he is considered a men’s wear designer, Mr. Chavarria, a red-carpet go-to for rule-bending celebrities like Colman Domingo, Billie Eilish and Kendrick Lamar, terms his clothes unisex.) Being an inveterate provocateur, he called the line Big Willy.

Not content with that, Mr. Chavarria, 57, tested consumer tolerance this month by releasing a new capsule collection that includes tank tops, boxer briefs and jockstraps (along with sweatshirts, shorts and socks) that were manipulated to look sweat-stained, torn and otherwise distressed.

The collection is meant to both engage and provoke, said Mr. Chavarria, who produced it in collaboration with Latino Fan Club, a pornography studio with a specialized target market and what may be politely called a D.I.Y. aesthetic. Founded in 1985 by Dana Bryan, a photographer who went by the pseudonym Brian Brennan, the studio, now defunct, offered a visual alternative to the glossy, sanitized iconography then dominating gay pornography.

With amateur styling and models almost certainly cast from the streets of New York, Latino Fan Club existed to celebrate raw sexuality at a time when AIDS had largely sent Eros underground. To whatever extent possible via an exploitative medium, it exalted gay Latinx sexuality, said Vince Aletti, a former photography critic for The New Yorker and The Village Voice, who has written about Latino Fan Club.

“It was a relief from all the white boy porn we’d been seeing for years,” Mr. Aletti said.

Mr. Chavarria, who called Latino Fan Club “iconic,” described the studio’s disruptive approach to pornography as mirroring the way he thought about his fashion label.

“In our line of work, there’s got to be more meaning behind the pretty pictures,” said the designer, who is making his debut at men’s fashion week in Paris on Friday. “Everything we do has to have some sort of force behind it, to break through the oppressive aspects of the world. Otherwise, why do it?”

For Jess Cuevas, an art director in Los Angeles who serves as Mr. Chavarria’s muse and right-hand man, flouting the norms of the luxury goods trade is part of the label’s aesthetic mission.

“I love the idea that luxury can also be so gritty and gross,” Mr. Cuevas said. And, indeed, the installations Mr. Cuevas designed for the Dover Street Market stores where the collection is sold meticulously replicate the raunchy atmospherics of the XXX bookstores that inspired them.

“To me, so much luxury is vulgar,” said Mr. Cuevas, who was a creative force behind Madonna’s last tour. “What I love is taking luxury and deliberately bringing it to this vulgar place.”

In that sense, Mr. Chavarria’s latest foray into undergarments deviates from the Calvin Klein formula, even as that brand has also toyed with the visual conventions of pornography sites like OnlyFans in its recent underwear ads starring the actor Jeremy Allen White. That is not to suggest Mr. Chavarria’s collaboration with Latino Fan Club lacks commercial appeal, said James Gilchrist, the vice president of Dover Street Market USA and its parent company, Comme des Garçons USA.

“From a wider business perspective, it’s getting harder and harder for creatives like Willy,” he said. “Sure, at the luxury end of the market, there is definitely a lack of creativity, but a big part of what we do is give designers creative freedom.”

If that includes selling expensive underwear that looks as if it has already been worn hard and tossed in the laundry hamper, so much the better.

“We love edgy things,” Mr. Gilchrist said. “It’s who we are.”

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Lifestyle

A 400-year-old kung fu-fighting monkey is finally having his American moment

Published

11 hours ago

November 28, 2025

Press Room

A 400-year-old kung fu-fighting monkey is finally having his American moment

Kang Wang plays the title role in San Francisco Opera’s world premiere production of The Monkey King. Like generations of kids in Asia, the tenor grew up in China obsessed with the superhero.

Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

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Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

The Monkey King is having a moment in America — and it’s been centuries in the making.

Wildly popular across Asia for generations as the focus of hundreds of adaptations on page, stage and screen, the Chinese superhero is also the star of a 2023 Netflix animated film, a blockbuster 2024 video game, and right now, a sold-out new opera at San Francisco Opera. Not bad for a character who made his literary debut in a 16th century Ming Dynasty novel.

The monkey who would be king

The Monkey King — known as Sun Wukong in Chinese — first burst fully-formed out of a rock in the classic 1592 novel Journey to the West, widely attributed to the poet Wu Cheng’en.

Steeped in Buddhist teachings and symbols, the story follows Sun Wukong’s epic journey towards enlightenment.

“He wants to be someone,” Frank Djeng, a cultural historian who has written about the character, said in an interview with NPR. “So he sets out to learn how to become immortal and powerful.”

The ambitious primate acquires remarkable superpowers. He can ride clouds like they’re skateboards, clone himself, and bash his enemies with a magic, telescoping stick.

But despite these skills, the gods reject him.

“He’s an outcast. He’s a rebel,” Djeng said. “He decides to go up to the heavens and kind of wreaks havoc there.”

Drawn to chaos

The Monkey King isn’t your typical square-jawed, noble superhero. Though he’s on a quest for enlightenment, Monkey is also a loud-mouthed mischief-maker, whose antics include stealing magical peaches from a sacred garden that grant immortality to the person who eats them – and then gobbling them down.

“I think we loved the monkey because of his courage, his longing for freedom, and his defiance against the gods,” said Chinese-Australian tenor Kang Wang, who plays the title role in the world premiere San Francisco Opera production and grew up obsessed with a 1980s live-action Chinese TV adaptation of the Monkey King story. “Also, he’s very playful. He’s always super happy and never sad.”

A still from the 2023 Netflix animated series The Monkey King — one among several major adaptations of the classic Chinese tale to break into the U.S. mainstream in recent years.

Netflix

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Netflix

This many-sidedness is key to understanding the character’s wide appeal. In Asia, the Monkey King has been reimagined as everything from a Communist-style proletarian hero fighting an oppressive bourgeoisie in the 1960s Chinese animated film Havoc in Heaven, to a cyborg in Sci-Fi West Saga Starzinger, a 1970s Japanese sci-fi anime series.

American Monkey

Some 20th-century versions gained popularity beyond Asia. But American audiences have been slower to embrace the simian superhero — until now.

Gene Luen Yang's path from teaching high school to writing 'American Born Chinese'

In 'American Born Chinese,' a beloved graphic novel gets Disney-fied

“It’s really stunning how the Monkey King is finally pushing through into the American consciousness,” said Gene Luen Yang, a cartoonist whose acclaimed 2006 graphic novel American Born Chinese weaves together the Monkey King legend with a contemporary story about the struggles of being an Asian American teen. Disney adapted the book into a TV series in 2023.

Yang said the character may until recently have seemed “too Asian” for most American audiences. But cultural shifts have changed that calculation, and Yang said he expects more American artists and producers will be monkeying around with the Monkey King in the years ahead.

“We all read manga, and we all watch anime,” Yang said. “As Americans, we’re much more used to that intersection between East and West.”

'Boxers & Saints' & Compassion: Questions For Gene Luen Yang

Lifestyle

Justin Bieber Hits Palm Springs with Scooter

Published

13 hours ago

November 28, 2025

Press Room

Justin Bieber Hits Palm Springs with Scooter

Justin Bieber
Desert Fun with Scooter!!!

Published November 28, 2025 7:38 AM PST

Justin Bieber‘s having a scooter reunion — of sorts, anyway — in the middle of his holiday weekend.

No, he and his former manager, Scooter Braun, weren’t kicking it in Palm Springs, but Justin was riding a fancy scooter around town on Thanksgiving Day. Justin was tooling around the desert on a white Vespa.

justin bieber scooter image direct 2

Justin, rocking some Uggs, made a run to one of his fave spots out there — Vintage Coffee shop — as he and the missus, Hailey Bieber, spent the holiday with their son, Jack.

hailey bieber justin bieber instagram 3

The Biebers posted a bunch of loved-up family pics from their turkey day, including one with mom and dad kissing, and another with baby Biebs in tow.

4/9/25

X17online.com

If Vintage Coffee sounds familiar … that’s the spot where Justin blew up at the paparazzi last year during Coachella.

As you know, Justin’s headlining the famed music festival next year, so in the words of a certain Terminator … he’ll be back, for sure.

Lifestyle

Soleil, a Belgian sheepdog, takes Best in Show at the National Dog Show

Published

1 day ago

November 27, 2025

Press Room

The Belgian Sheepdog, Soleil, and handler Daniel Martin of Princeton, N.C., won Best in Show at the 24th Annual National Dog Show presented by Purina.

National Dog Show

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National Dog Show

Soleil, a Belgian Sheepdog, has won Best in Show at the 2025 National Dog Show, beating out more than 1900 dogs in this year’s competition.

The pitch black, six-year-old Soleil appeared calm despite all the activity around her as the crowd and her handler, Daniel Martin from Princeton, North Carolina accepted the award.

Martin says Soleil’s attitude and movement helped her clinch the title. “She’s the professional,” he said. “She loves the crowd and the big arena. Fantastic day.”

At that National Dog Show in Philadelphia, a Beauceron, Bergamasco Sheepdog and Entlebucher Mountain Dog stand for judging. Three members of the Herding Group, the 2025 winner, a Belgian Sheepdog named Soleil, won Best in the Herding Group before going on to be named Best in Show.

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NBC

Soleil beat out six other finalists at the annual canine competition, hosted by the Kennel Club of Philadelphia and broadcast by NBC on Thanksgiving Day from a group of seven categories. That includes the Working, Non-Sporting, Sporting, Terrier and Toy Groups. Soleil is part of the Herding Group. George, an American Foxhound part of the Hound Group, won the Reserve Best in Show.

“Soleil was just ‘on’ today,” Martin added. “I knew that this would be a fierce, intense competition. Soleil loves the energy and she feels it. That’s her magic.”

Charlie Olvis, the judge of the competition, praised Soleil, saying she was “on.”.

“Didn’t put its foot down wrong. Didn’t miss a beat. And it is in drop-dead gorgeous condition,” Olvis said.

The American Kennel Club describes the Belgian Sheepdog as highly trainable herders that are “bright, watchful and serious-minded”, adding that “these sensitive souls crave human companionship and abhor neglect”. Their average lifespan is between 10 and 14 years.

The National Dog Show was founded in 1879 and has been held annually since 1933. It’s been televised since 2002, and has become a popular Thanksgiving tradition, with an estimated 20 million animal lovers tuning in to watch, according to Purina, which presented the show.

A number of additional competitions are held behind the scenes including a barking contest.