I Pray to Chavarri

And why is that? Brooklyn-based designer of Chavarri, Sophia Martinez, pours herself into everything that she creates and does so with meaning and purpose. The dichotomic balance that is Chavarri is hardcore, yet soft. Heavenly, yet coy. However, her brand is more than just the clothes that she makes. It’s a crafted timeline of who she is, the struggles she has faced in her life, and an homage to her Mexican roots. Honoring those who have come before her, and the legacy that she will leave behind.

Let's jump right into it. How are you doing today? What's your headspace like?

I was just telling my boyfriend last night that I feel like us women, we think about so much ahead of time. You know, I'm already thinking about the next collection and what to do. I'm also thinking about all my school projects that are due on Tuesday and Thursday. But it's not like a bad overwhelmed, it's a good overwhelmed, because I feel like during COVID, I had no purpose because I was doing nothing, I was stuck at home. So I'm kind of grateful to be overwhelmed right now.

It's like you're tackling so many different things at once and you could totally just let it overwhelm you to where you shut down. But instead, you just keep pushing through. Let's talk about your design process. Where do you get your inspiration from?

So I feel like my inspiration is like layers of times in my life. From traumatic experiences, to times where I was in love with this crazy guy, like lustfull experiences, and just reflecting back on all of that, and why it was. I've changed a lot since those times, and I think that's what I put into my collection as far as feelings of melancholy. It's why I use the blue filter a lot, because I feel like it really reflects who I am as a designer, because yes, I use lace, light colors, and soft fabrics. But there's a sadness to it and a seriousness to it, as well. I don't want it to be super girly and happy, I want it to be soft and sad, in a way. And I hope that I reflect that. I don't really expect everybody to understand because it's kind of like an art process for everybody to interpret. But with my plushies items, that reminded me of my childhood. This is actually a way for me to heal my inner child and despite my age, I just feel like it was necessary for me to grow in that way and to accept myself. Regardless of all the time that's passed.

I'm just really resonating with what you were saying about buying the plushies and using this as a form of therapy to heal that inner child of yours.

Yeah, it's some innocence. I was rushing to grow up and I guess be accepted in a way by the male gaze or whatever. And I remember I had so many plushies my mom had to give all of them away. And I forgot about them and stopped caring about them.

Where does Chavarri come from?

So that's my mom's maiden name. I grew up with a really big family. My mom has seven brothers and sisters and my dad has six brothers and sisters. All of them have the last name Chavarri and my grandfather recently passed from COVID. He was like the glue of the family because he was kind and, you know, didn't talk as much, but my grandma's like the total opposite. She's very controlling and loud and opinionated. So he was the head that made everything okay, and worth coming for. He was a musician in Guatemala and he was pretty famous. He went on tour in Central America, like way back in the 70s and 80s and stuff, before they took my mom and all her brothers and sisters to the United States. My mom is telling me that we come from a long lineage of artists. So I just want to pay tribute to my lineage, even though like, there are a bunch of toxic motherfuckers but it's more keeping us alive in a way. I feel like I'm not a fan of the fact that there's so many white designers. So I love, you know, the designer Barragan. So I interned for him and I loved everything about his spirit, because he's Mexican, and I'm Mexican, and Guatemalan. So I never lived in Mexico, but I would ask him, like, how it was living there and does he miss it? How it is to be a gay man in Mexico? Him using his last name made me want to use my last name. We have to remember who we are and put our name into the fashion industry with our history of people of color, you know?

My family's from Ecuador so everything is very familiar, bringing it back to your roots, and paying homage to your ancestors. So it's really nice to see that despite those feelings of loneliness and that melancholy in your own life experience, you're really taking all of this right now and pouring it back into your art.

I want to do it for people of color, you know?

100%. You use the term, "take a deep breath" frequently in your work. Why does this mantra resonate with you so much?

I think I used to have mostly depression, but lately, I would say it's shifted into anxiety. Thinking about the past too much, thinking about the future too much, and letting it consume you. But what helps me is to literally close my eyes, and take a deep breath, to recenter myself and be in the moment. I think that it's very important to focus on your breath. So I like to put that as a reminder for other people.

It's really nice to see how intentional you are with your designs and that every piece has that deeper meaning behind it.

Exactly. I want to make things with purpose and intention, you know, not just aesthetically pleasing. I think everything that's in existence should serve a purpose... Issey Miyake is one of my greatest inspirations and his motto was to make clothing with purpose that people could wear in different ways and treasure. And that's literally what I want to do.

Talking about not being wasteful and giving things a purpose, a lot of your pieces are tech scraps from the '70s, '80s. So what is it about these pieces that you find so special?

I like to be sustainable throughout and I go to this place close to the military base on the water where they take extra fabrics from designers, like Marc Jacobs, and partner with them and sell the fabrics to smaller designers. And then the tech scraps, I love sci-fi movies like I love, love love. They always give me this feeling in my stomach, even if it's apocalyptic. Even The Matrix is not so positive about the future, but I still enjoy the fashion, the eerie feeling, and the coldness of it. I don't know, there's something about it.

With the tech scraps, I was thinking, how can I bring my love of futurism without being cheesy or too much? So I was scrolling through eBay, and I typed in vintage circuit boards. I thought that the pattern was so beautiful and then the patterns were made out of real silver. So I'm like, "Wow, this is jewelry." I started sketching designs, and I'm like, "How can I make this into something chic and wearable and not overdoing it?" Being tasteful, you know, because it is something that's unconventional as jewelry. So I came up with the I Pray to Tech circuit board crosses and the little microchip necklaces.

So with your work, you also do all the photography, for the collections as well. How is it melding the fashion and photo worlds together?

I just feel like I have such a deep background because I've dabbled in a lot of things. So I feel like I've acquired skills over the years. My first medium was drawing as a kid. And then my mom got my first sewing machine when I was very young, so I started learning that, but then my dad gave my sister a camera when she was very young as well. She and I loved taking pictures. We took pictures of everything, and we actually made YouTube videos, like very silly ones and we edited them and then uploaded them. Then when MySpace came around, we were heavy in it. I don't know if you remember the MySpace days, but like, we were in coding, you know what I mean?

No, literally being coders on that.

We literally know how to code because of MySpace. But I grew up in South Carolina so there's not many artistic people there and stuff like that. I remember specifically in high school, people paid me to do their MySpace pages, and to edit their pictures. I was deep in the scene thing too and I loved Tumblr and how the girls took pictures of themselves, and did the scene hair and all that. So we would dress up our friend in all these scene clothes and do her makeup and everything and take pictures of her. I love photography and I really don't mind taking the pictures and editing them. Because I feel like who's better at communicating your vision than yourself, right? But I'd love to collaborate with photographers in the future.

In the next year how far would you like to see Chavarri go?

In the next year I would love to be on SSENSE, but I know that takes a lot. I don't even know what it takes to be on there. I want more interviews like this one and I really love Retail Pharmacy and what she's doing. I guess third party pop-ups like that. They're really fun and I love seeing the other designers' pieces. I am thinking about doing a small runway show with Retail Pharmacy in the future. That is a big hope, because I would love to do something physical visually, you know? Even if it's not like a runway show and it's more avant garde and freestyle.

Fashion

Happy 424 Day!

Simon Rasmussen — What's going on?

Guillermo Andrade — Right now we're just setting everything up.

So, what are you doing, is it a party?

Well, I kind of felt universally forced, right? Because 4/24/24, I was just like, I don’t really have a choice here. The stars also just kind of aligned, so to be honest, I got this settlement that came with a bunch of clothes so I had this idea to give back to the kids who fuck with us by allowing them to buy our shit first. Not handing stuff out for free, but to do it in a way where we could skip the middleman of the industry, so to speak, and not allow clothes to disappear into the abyss of Farfetch or whatever else. So what we’re going to do is a sort of warehouse sale, which we’ve never done before so that was really exciting for me. I didn’t want to do just another warehouse sale, so it’s like a sample sale turns rager. We teamed up with Adidas and a couple of other sponsors, then drinks, DJs, and a performance.

Sick, I love it.

Yeah. My dream sample sale. Also, it’s not just hoodies and t-shirts here in there, it’s proper collections from the past three seasons. I’m also not picking and choosing, trying to make it accessible, like this was the only way I could afford to buy shit when I was a kid, bro. Sample sales were the thing I looked forward to the most.

I feel you. In New York, there's the annual CDG sale, which is when I used to cop all my CDG.

The only time I could afford Rick. I flew to New York once for a Rick sample sale and I was like, Wow, I can't believe I got invited. And it was mental. I still have those pieces. I will never sell them. Not even because I got 'em cheap. It was also just really fun. Even on the flight to New York, I was like, I can't believe I'm going to New York for a sample sale, what a fucking loser I am. But it was like the adult version of when I was a kid and I was like, Wow, I can't believe I'm 20-something and I'm still doing the thing I was doing in high school. So I hope we can create moments like that for kids here in LA.

Yeah. I love that. It’s important to connect with them; they’re essentially creating the brand. If you don't have them, good luck.

I mean, yeah. Fuck, bro. It's cool that we've been around for this long. I mean, it got a little rocky there for a second I think, for all of us. So coming out of it, tomorrow is a celebration. And it’s like an odd day of the week. It's a Wednesday, super random. And now that we've set it up, the homies are all like, Yo, I'm coming. I'm coming. Let me jump on stage, let me do this, and that's really what it's always been about. It's not some other strategy to get likes on the internet.

That’s how the best things happen, you just couldn’t help yourself. It was intuitive.

Yeah, it all came together in a really nice way.

Would you say that’s how 424 started as well? I remember we met in like 2010 on Fairfax and I was visiting with Rasmus…

Oh bro, it’s probably the time when I started the branch… do you remember Cecilia from Black Dakini? She’s the one that introduced me to CIFF and honestly, I didn’t even care what she was doing, I was just like, I’m coming, I’ll go with you. She said she’d give me half of her booth and I said, Awesome count me in. At the time, I had just gotten my green card and I wasn't allowed to ever leave America, so Copenhagen was one of the first cities I went to when I could finally travel. I mean, you see what we did at CIFF bro? It became our fucking hub for half a decade.

That was a moment for sure.

I remember the first account I got was Antonioli, and he came super gangster, being like, You're going to sell me these clothes. And I was like, bro, I didn't come to sell clothes. I'm just kind of catching a vibe with my homie and I made these things. And he's like, No, you're going to sell it to me. And then I was like, Oh my god that’s Claudio Antonioli. So then I went home, I googled wholesale, and figured that shit out. [laughs]

[Laughs]

Like you said, I couldn't help myself, but I didn't just make t-shirts and hoodies either. I was really on my Rick wave, so I made my version of the Rick things. It was that meets like The Boondock Saints, because I'm still a little bit of a Cali bro, sort of rock kid, but not really. I like hip-hop, but I like the way the rock stars look. I like the contrast. I thought it was cool. After that, I just never stopped.

It was clear to me when I first met you that you were onto your own thing in LA. It made a lot of sense, and it was so cool. It was before 424 was its own brand; you just had the store and this really cool curation.

It was all my shit, bro. I was very, very invested in sharing all of these things that I was finding from all over the world, like Astrid Anderson. She was one of those designers at the time, so important to 424. The connection to Copenhagen specifically for me was huge. I had a big fan base there. It was incredible. And then here in LA, we were sharing the things that we were a part of and finding; it was still the early days of Fear of God, Rhude, Martine Rose. A lot of these brands, we were the first store to ever sell it — we were selling Hood By Air on the West Coast.

You had Rick as well, I remember.

Oh yeah. It took me a long time. But I got Rick, bro. By the time I had to close the store on Fairfax, I already had a Raf Simons account. I had reached my ultimate dream. It was really all the stuff I wanted to wear at the time. It was dope. The best of the best.

We had an office magazine newsstand in there as well.

Oh yeah, we did! I came to visit the one you had, and I was like, Yo, I got to bring this whole fucking thing over here. But yeah, in LA, after two days people forget you exist, but everyone’s been super supportive. We’re all 10 years older now. We've been around forever at this point.

It can be dangerous to take those breaks when you’re figuring shit out, but there’s something very genuine to this comeback you’re having.

Thank you, thank you. We’ve been in and out of those fucking showrooms in Paris for long enough. I've been in and out of these factories for the past 10 years of my life. We had to figure something out. And I think now really diving in, being in Italy full time and being there to develop these products over time, I think that the whole thing just really shows the suppliers respect you more. The people who are making your goods understand why you're making them. And I think now I finally got to the place where I'm not making Italian things, I’m making my clothes, I'm making Cali-centric shit, but with that European technicality and execution. With this Fall / Winter collection, it clicked.

So what’s the vision for the next year? What are you manifesting?

I'm just fucking relentless, bro. This is the way I want to live my life. Now that we are more aligned, more prepared, and have more experience, moving forward it is just more of becoming a fully functioning company that can provide and create opportunities for all of the people around me. We’ve been operating just on instinct for a long time.

Sustaining a business is scary, trust me I know.

Scary as fuck, dog. I just opened a store next to Bottega, bro, and it’s like what am I even doing? You have to just believe in the thing you're doing more than anybody else.

100%, and it seems like that’s what you’re doing.

And fashion’s kind of a competitive sport, as much as people don’t think it is. We can reach a certain level without losing ourselves. My biggest ambition at the moment is to create something that, when you leave one of our neighbors you come into our place you don’t feel that the level has been sacrificed at all. And it’s not easy.

Definitely. I wish I could be there tomorrow.

Thank you, bro. 10 years now. You’ve always shown me so much love. We have to do a booth or have the office part of the next 424 day. Shit let’s do a 424 day in New York.

That would be sick. Let's do it. I'm here. Let’s catch up soon.

Next season’s right around the corner so I’ll see you in Paris.

Yes, see you in Paris and Happy 424 day!

Fashion

Luis De Javier's Puta Takeover

April 25, 2024

Last night with Luis De Javier, guests were overheard confirming this generation's most vital conundrum: “If I’m cunt, I can still be pussy.” “And if you’re pussy, you can still be cunt.” This sentiment echoed throughout the night as we celebrated De Javier’s first-ever streetwear collection, "Puta". We spent seven hours at Ella Funt at a dinner turned party that only he could’ve thrown (co-hosted by emcee). It was too dark for even the most aspiring-to-look-mysterious of us to wear sunglasses inside. Under the semi-oppressive flash of party photographers, we danced as much as the space would allow, drank tequila out of teacups and kissed each other on the cheeks with a vaguely European intimacy. “I’m doing streetwear!” De Javier could be heard exclaiming — whether it be in disbelief or excitement, we couldn’t tell you.

Words and photos by Izzy Capulong

The Spanish-born London-based designer has been well-loved for his genderless tailoring, latex mastery, and overall message of empowerment. Dressing everyone from ravers to A-listers, De Javier’s latest drop pushes his design repertoire to a new level. “While designing for my celebrity clientele and showcasing my creations on the runway has always been my dream,” he notes, “It’s equally important to me that my brand resonates with a wider, more diverse audience.” While this collection’s medium has shifted from corsets to sweatshirts, the classic LDJ avant-garde sensibilities remain. Bikinis and booty shorts are shamelessly emblazoned with “PUTA,” blazers are constructed with ample shoulder padding, and I had my eye on the cheekily-named “Faguette Bag.”

The Puta collection will be available exclusively on emcee.

Fashion

Nadia Lee Cohen Celebrates Paris Texas Launch at the Chateau

To celebrate the launch, Cohen and founder and creative director of Paris Texas, Annamaria Brivio hosted an intimate dinner at the Chateau Marmont pictured below. Arman Naféei entertained guests throughout the evening with a special playlist he curated for the occasion.