Becoming A Cultural Phenomenon with Willy Chavarria

• 02:18–03:17 | Growing a Fashion Brand From the Ground Up
• 03:58–06:20 | Growing Up an Outsider and Finding His Imagination
• 06:20–08:25 | How San Francisco’s ’90s Club Culture Changed Everything
• 09:54–12:24 | Why Personal Style Matters More Than Fashion
• 12:24–14:06 | Fashion as Perception, Storytelling and Self-Expression
• 14:07–15:58 | The Work History That Taught Him How to Build a Brand
• 15:58–17:40 | Starting a Brand at 40 and Knowing When You’re Ready
• 17:40–19:24 | Letting Go of Regret and Taking Control of Your Destiny
• 19:45–22:32 | Building a Brand Around Positivity, Inclusivity and Human Dignity
• 22:32–25:11 | When Political Conviction Becomes Part of the Brand
• 25:27–28:40 | Finding Joy in the Middle of a Horror Show
• 32:17–34:09 | The Ambition to Become the Next Ralph Lauren
• 34:10–38:42 | Redefining the Boundaries Between Menswear and Womenswear
• 41:47–44:04 | Why Loyalty Is Radical in Fashion
• 44:14–46:12 | Casting as Emotional Storytelling
• 48:34–50:57 | Why Paris Represents a New Chapter for Fashion
• 53:38–55:27 | Taking Fashion Beyond Clothes Into Music, Film and Entertainment
• 55:27–57:21 | Silencing the Inner Saboteur and Learning to Say “So What?”
• 57:23–58:38 | Taking Willy Chavarria Global
• 58:38–01:02:38 | Building a Life and Business With the Person You Love
• 01:02:40–01:04:39 | What Is Contemporary Now? Thinking Bigger Than Ourselves

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Notable Quotes: 

• On Believing Anything Is Possible “The fact that I'm doing what I'm doing now, considering where I come from, is so remarkable that I do believe anything is possible.”
• On Finding Belonging Among the Misfits “It's the misfits. That's where I always felt most welcome was with the outsider crew.”
• On Why Personal Style Matters More Than Fashion “I really love people's individual style far more than I love fashion.”
• On Fashion Being a Matter of Perception “Fashion is all perception. All of it is perception. It's like art. Music.”
• On Learning the Business From the Ground Up “I credit my work history with everything. In fact, anytime someone comes to me that was like a young kid that wants to be a designer. First thing I tell them is you've got to get in the workforce. Start at the bottom.”
• On Letting Go of Regret “There really are no regrets, because we are always in this moment, and this moment is the only moment that counts.”
• On Getting Inside the Industry to Make Change “In order to make change in the industry, I had to really get in there and be a part.”
• On Designing With a Sense of Human Dignity “I just intentionally speak to the good, I speak to what I feel it is to be human. I speak to human rights, human dignity.”
• On Finding Joy in Dark Times “Joy is our sustenance. It's our food. It's what makes us fight stronger and love harder.”
• On Holding Joy and Pain in the Same Space “Putting the two together felt like telling the truth, not trying to scapegoat the fact that joy exists and pain exists, but to share them in the same space.”
• On Loyalty in Fashion “For me loyalty is everything.”
• On Building a Creative World Through Trust “You build your world through working with people who you trust and who trust you.”
• On Casting as Emotional Storytelling “At its core, it's about emotional contact with the audience.”
• On Persistence and Getting Back Up “It's not like I haven't been beaten down to shit a million times in my life, because for sure I have. It's just that I've continued to get back up.”
• On Silencing the Inner Saboteur “You just need to shut the fuck up and only tell yourself the best things and remind yourself that, yeah, you can do it. And if you do it and you don't succeed, then so what?”
• On What It Means to Be Contemporary Now “I think what's contemporary right now is thinking bigger than ourselves.”
• On Being Part of Something Bigger Than Ourselves “We are not just individuals that are vain and obsessed with, you know, ourselves and our worlds around us, but we are plugged into a bigger picture that needs to do the greatest we can do.”