Old School adidas Hoops, Kareem, and Standing Up: Inside Willy Chavarria’s Paris Playbook

Willy Chavarria has been blowing up our feeds lately. The Mexican-American designer made his much-hyped Paris debut last month, where his eponymous label showcased signature oversized silhouettes, unapologetic political energy, and a powerful embrace of Chicano culture. Growing up in Fresno, California, Chavarria’s connection to sneakers was deeply personal. He wore his dad’s battered with skinny corduroy jeans, blending his own style with the laid back cool of 70s basketball icons like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

For his SS25 show, América, Chavarria paid homage to that era with a remixed version of the Low – featuring pointed toes wrapped in velvety suede, cheetah and zebra print uppers, and fold-over tongues. In Paris, he reimagined another personal favourite from the adidas hoops archive: the (‘It’s very, very sexy,’ he tells us), transforming it into half a dozen bold styles, including combat boots.

Here at Sneaker Freaker, we’re also giving Chavarria extra style points for joining the exalted ranks of print media. Last month, he teamed up with artist Gustavo Garcia to curate a special photography zine at Dover Street Market as part of a human rights campaign – man after our own hearts! We sat down with Willy Chavarria after his Tarantula show in Paris to chat old school hardwood hoopers, the legend of Kareem, and the importance of standing up on social issues.

Congratulations on your first Paris show! It’s great to see footwear make a strong appearance within the collections. Did you have a connection to adidas when you were growing up?
Yeah, actually it was funny because I remember when I first started wearing sneakers, I was wearing my father's old adidas. They were like an eighties or late seventies model with blue suede details. I loved them and I would wear them with skinny corduroy jeans. I thought it was so cool. But yeah, I remember when Sneaker Freaker first came out and during that time, it was at the onset of sneaker culture, wasn't it?

Yeah, 2002 and we’re still around. We still produce the magazine.
I love it. I love print. It's so good. In fact, I've done another little print magazine with this artist Gustavo Garcia, and we dropped it at Dover Street New York, where we also did a very small adidas capsule job. It's part of this partnership we did with the human rights campaign in Paris, and we did it in New York where it's just like an equality, pro-love campaign. It's basically a zine filled with beautiful photographs of intimacy by Gustavo and it was paired with a sneaker drop of the pointed-toed Jabbar that I did for SS25.

The Jabbar hasn’t released yet, as it comes in May, but I did animal skin tops, so it looks like the Creeper Jabbar. It doesn't have a thick midsole, so it's really wearable, but it looks really, really chic. You see the little cheetah print or the zebra print, and it looks really amazing poking out from a wide leg pant, so it's really cool.

So impactful. We know that you love a Jabbar. Why?
I mean, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is so cool and actually when I was a little boy, this is so weird, but I used to ask my parents and people to call me Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I wanted to change my name to be Kareem. So funny. He was such an icon in our household. I played and I watched basketball growing up. My dad was a huge fan and he even named me after the basketball player, Bill Bradley.

Jabbar is such an important figure in basketball and beyond. Why is it so important to use your pieces and collection as an avenue to share your views?
I think that it's incredibly important for us, no matter what line of work we're in, to share a message of equality and human dignity because so many of our rights are under attack right now, not just in the United States, but globally. There's such an upsurge of hate, and I think that now more than ever, it's imperative that we come together and really speak in favour of humanity. And for me, that has been a key part of my philosophy and my business. I found that the two can very much coexist – you can build a business while taking a stand on social justice issues. When I formed the brand, that was the foundation. I told my team, ‘Okay, we're doing this and this is how it's going to be’. Everything we do is going to be in support of human rights. And we weren't sure, or I wasn't sure at that time if that was the right path from a business standpoint, but it has certainly proved to be a viable way of growing the business.

How is footwear part of that journey of self-expression?
Well, everything that I create is a reflection of that self-expression and the importance of our own human identities. Whether it's a jacket or a shoe or a hat, whatever, it's all considered in the design. So, the Jabbar collection was very intentionally collaborating with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, given his incredible voice and his stand on social justice issues.

So that was top of mind. And still there's an element of cool and edge that we incorporate into everything. Ultimately, it's got to look great and it's got to feel great. I love the crooked tongue on the Jabbar that we did because it's such an iconic street style to have that tongue flapping out and it kind of falls over. So, we just designed it so that it actually folds over to the left, so it's not on the front of the shoe. It's more visible on the side, and we put the collaboration label woven on the exterior so it's really in your face.

How involved are you with the design process of the footwear?
I'm very involved. I work very closely with the team at adidas, so it's really just me and the team.We literally have white pieces of paper and Sharpies because I love to sketch the old school way. We also have moodboards and everyone on the adidas team is there, from the head of the footwear to the graphics team, to the shoe designer, to the materials designer, to the colourist. Everybody's there working together. It's really an amazing process because adidas are so well invested into the creation of footwear that the options are limitless. We'll run a few ideas and we sample them at the headquarters and look at them, play around with them, try them on and see what looks best. We try them on with the apparel that we're making to make sure that the specs of the shoe land right with the specs of the garments. It's really fun. It's very advanced, but it's also very experimental and kind of like a creative exercise that's really, really enjoyable.

And when you say sampling instantly, are you working with 3D printers?
Yeah, it's a lot of 3D printing for the bottoms and the outsoles, but then there’s also a workshop there that can actually last and sew and put together uppers. So, it's a combination. So we'll do the hand sketches and then a designer will do the renderings in 3D, and then we'll get the little samples.

And you've been into the adidas Archive, how was that experience?
There are just endless possibilities. It's so amazing to see everything that's been done in the past, and it really sets a trajectory for what can be done in the future, because you can see how endless the possibilities are. You can also see the cultural relevance that adidas has had over the years, and it's so impactful. It's a brand that has really just touched everybody, from its presence in true athletics sportswear to the revolutionary moment of fashion sportswear.

Is there a model that you saw in the archive that you'd love to work on?
Well, I have always found the Forum to be very, very sexy. I feel like that shoe is just very, very tough. And for me, I remember it in the late eighties or nineties, I can't quite remember, but just having a bad boy edge to it and seeing it with oversized leather jackets. That moment in time was so influential for me, that tough, sexy shoe at the beginning of sneaker culture when it was still kind of niche being so tough and so cool. And I used to wear them, and I felt very sexy wearing them.

I also loved how the Forum was incorporated into hip hop culture, and at this time, street culture was influencing fashion at its most powerful, and it just looks so great. I just really wanted to honour that. And then of course, bring it into this modern day where it has a harder resonance in the show, just really, really tough. So we expanded on the bottom and we just did it in beautiful Italian leathers. The combat boot version has just the right amount of slouch so that when you wear it, it gives you that combat boot vibe, but it's still very soft around the ankle and the lower leg.

You featured several variations of the Forum as part of your Paris show. Why did you decide to go down that route?
Well, we started with the Forum, so it's a low cut Forum on a thick bottom. I felt like this is the security guard shoe, and I was actually thinking what are some really tough jobs that people need to wear sneakers in? So, we had the security guard and then we had the policeman who wore a higher cut boot... And then we had the soldier, which was the full-on combat boot. Then we had the heel, the Kitten heel-slash-Cuban heel, which was like the professor. And then we had the real dirty version, like the Forum that I used to wear back in the late eighties, early nineties, and I still have it here. I still love that shoe. I'm so happy we redid it where it's just black Italian leather with red stripes. And I don't think we had it ready for the show, but it's going to have a nice gold foil rose stamped on it. And yeah, I just felt like hitting it from all angles was the best way to really drive that message home for the Forum.

Well, I love that you've got personas to each of the styles, the soldier, the security guard, the policeman and professor, you're definitely ready for battle. I love that. I want to talk about your future. So, the DSM drop has happened and you're doing some work with some wonderful creatives, but what else is in store for you in the future? What can we expect to see or to hear from you?
Right now it's time to start thinking about the spring season. So I haven't quite thought about it yet, but it's time to start thinking about that. And I think we'll just see more expansion. Hopefully we'll see more cool collaborative work with adidas. We have a lot of good ideas that we're still throwing around that we could do in the next year. But really it's about driving home this idea of human dignity in every way we can through whatever platform we can, and a message of resistance and resilience in times of oppression.

For more on Paris Fashion Week, make sure to check out our of Men’s AW25.