Willy Chavarria and Byredo Fêted the Designer’s Big Win
On Monday night, Jean’s set the scene for Willy Chavarria’s victory lap: winning the CFDA’s 2024 Menswear Designer of the Year Award. Between perched bouquets of red carnations and roses (references to the designer’s work) and fragrant Byredo candles, guests celebrated Chavarria’s prolific impact – a culmination of years of worldbuilding around notions of evolving masculinity and contemporary Chicano identity.
Chavarria’s momentous win brought together a vibrant crowd of admirers and friends. Guests in attendance to support the designer included Omar Apollo, Darren Chris, and Susanne Bartsch, design contemporaries including Raul Zepol of Luar (a fellow 2024 winner) and Christian Siriano, and industry mainstays such as Julie Gilhart, Alton Mason, Paloma Elsesser, and Alex Consani.
The downtown restaurant-meets-club was transformed for one night only into a multi-floor party venue bathed in deep red light. Eli Escobar, Marco Neves, and Devoye spun a vibrant soundtrack between each room. A table of Willy muses – frequent fixtures of his campaigns and runway shows – held court in the upstairs dance area, while industry peers mingled and made their way between the floors for refreshed glasses of champagne and chatter, as DJs carried the audience through the evening.
At midnight, the designer himself arrived to buoyant fanfare and triumphant applause. Chavarria’s entrance charged the space with renewed vigor, as well as the promise of the sustained continuation of the brand’s ethos: merging resilience with softness, heritage with modernity.
Peer winners at this year’s CFDA Awards included Raul Lopez of Luar, Rachel Scott of Diotima, and Henry Zankov of Zankov. The group reimagines contemporary American fashion with a blend of cultural heritage, innovative techniques, and social consciousness.
Amazon Fashion and Coach’s Party in the Park
“Law Roach! On the bus?!” CFDA CEO Steven Kolb could be heard saying as the superstylist boarded. Without missing a beat, Roach, wearing a velvet robe by menswear designer of the year recipient Willy Chavarria and carrying a mini Birkin, retaliated, “I know…can you believe it!”
Post-CFDA Awards, the bus was the great equalizer as revelers made their way to Central Park for the official after-party, hosted by Amazon Fashion and Coach, which kicked off at 10 p.m. As no cars are permitted in the park, all guests, no matter how starry, dutifully lined up to reach the Boathouse via shuttles. Or a Citibike, in the case of Colm Dillane of KidSuper.
Since early Monday morning, the famed restaurant had been entirely transformed to a magenta-hued party lounge, complete with plush carpets, curtains, and curved sofas, an elevated stage, and numerous photo areas with autumnal flora and fauna backdrops—much to the delight of every recognizable face from your TikTok feed. (If the room felt extra bright, it was probably due to the glow of the countless portable ring lights constantly in use.)
Those ring lights certainly sprung into action too, to catch the razzledazzle of a surprise strip tease burlesque performance by Violet Chachki. Having attended the ceremony as a guest of Coach earlier that evening, the RuPaul's Drag Race season 7 winner caused whoots and woos as she flung her rhinestone corset into the crowd while lip-syncing along to the song Closer by EDM duo Lemaitre and ruffling her ombré feathers.
As the room began to fill with designers, including Jonathan Simkhai, Prabal Gurung, LaQuan Smith, Rebecca Minkoff, Fernando Garcia, Bach Mai, and Kate Barton, waiters did their best to offload trays of fries, but as the clock ticked closer to midnight, most attendees only had eyes for the candy table and the large crystal bowls of punch at the bar. Outside, taking a breather, eight months pregnant Cult Gaia founder Jasmin Larian was chilling out—and glowing—with her date, Taylor Hill, while a Hector handbag lying idle and unattended on a cocktail table suggested that the always-uniformed Thom Browne team must be nearby (they were!).
One person who didn’t schlep it on the bus to the bash was GloRilla; if the tell-tale SUV parked outside the entrance with the license plate LE GOAT was anything to go off. Come 11.50 p.m., it was time for DJ Kitty Ca$h to welcome the rapper to the stage. It had been a pretty wild 24 hours for the Memphis-born hitmaker. Not only had she attended her first CFDAs (avec Coach), but she also made headlines across music websites for featuring on Tyler, The Creator's hotly-anticipated new album, which dropped on Monday, further cementing her status as a name of the moment. As she launched into her Grammy-nominated smash hit F.N.F (Let’s Go), the crowd was energetically shouting lyrics back at her, none with more gusto than a now-blonde ‘Bayou Barbie’ Angel Reese, who was almost climbing on stage herself with the excitement.
“Thank you so much to my boy Stuart—though he said I can call him Stu. We’re going to keep turning it up,” GloRilla called from the platform. The Coach creative director, hugging supermodel Winnie Harlow with one arm, smiled back, before tucking into an Amazon Fashion and Coach-branded burger with the other. Dinner and a show!
