Willy Chavarria and Zara have just released VATÍSIMO, a ready-to-wear capsule that puts one of fashion’s sharpest independent voices directly into the hands of a global audience, and the clothes are worth paying attention to.
The collection’s name tells you something about its intentions. VATÍSIMO is the superlative form of “vato,” a colloquial term in Chicano culture for friends, partners, and loved ones. It celebrates belonging. That’s a loaded word to attach to a Zara drop, but Chavarria seems to mean it.
The son of a Mexican immigrant father and an Irish mother, Chavarria has built his label around Chicano heritage, framing collections through themes of identity, politics, and power. He held senior roles at Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein before fully committing to his own name. This January, he showed a critically acclaimed collection in Paris, placing him firmly among the most compelling figures currently working in American menswear. The Zara collaboration, then, is not a rescue deal. It’s an expansion.
VATÍSIMO comprises 100 pieces of menswear and 50 pieces of womenswear, along with accessories and jewelry, with prices ranging from $25.90 to $529. The materials are more serious than you might expect from a fast-fashion context: Italian fabrics, leather, cupro, denim, knits, and jersey all appear throughout the line. Key pieces include tailored jackets with broad, padded shoulders cut to a macho ’80s silhouette, three-quarter-length chinos, bodysuits, and leather outerwear. For women, there are highly structured pencil skirts, wide-leg shorts with a sharp angled silhouette, short-sleeved cupro shirts with raw-edge finishing, and feminine silk slips. Red roses – a signature of Chavarria’s work – appear strategically on select garments, alongside co-branded interior labels.
What gives the collection its coherence is that Chavarria hasn’t softened anything. Zara describes it as “a portrait of Willy’s own Chicano cultural identity through the lens of contemporary fashion consciousness,” celebrating Latin American influence alongside references to American workwear and the leisure silhouettes of past decades. That’s a careful formulation, but the clothes back it up. The shoulder structures are deliberate, the proportions studied, the cultural anchoring clear. “Ultimately, I wanted to share the brand with a wider audience at more accessible price points, while still maintaining a high level of quality,” Chavarria said. That’s a reasonable ambition, and on the evidence of the lookbook, he largely pulls it off.
The campaign, however, is where the project becomes genuinely interesting. Co-directed by Chavarria and photographer Glen Luchford, it stars supermodel Christy Turlington and actor Alberto Guerra and was shot in Mexico. The film channels the visual intensity of telenovelas, unfolding a fatal love quadrangle shaped by power, jealousy, and desire. “The campaign is inspired by the Mexican telenovelas my team and I watched growing up,” Chavarria said, adding that working with Turlington and Guerra was something of a dream. Turlington, in particular, is reportedly shown in a way she has rarely been seen before. That’s a bold claim, but Luchford has the technical authority to justify it.
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The broader context matters here. In recent years, Zara has worked to reposition itself from a fast-fashion label into an affordable designer brand, partly through a string of high-profile collaborations. Past partners include Stefano Pilati, Kate Moss, Ludovic de Saint Sernin, and photographer Steven Meisel. Last week, the brand also announced a two-year creative partnership with John Galliano. The pace is striking. Zara is clearly betting that proximity to genuine creative talent will shift how the industry reads the brand.
Whether that bet pays off depends, ultimately, on the clothes – and on whether designers like Chavarria retain enough of themselves in the process. With VATÍSIMO, the answer leans toward yes. Some critics and Chavarria fans have questioned whether the collaboration risks diluting his message. That’s a fair concern. But the silhouettes are sharp, the references are specific, and the campaign has real teeth. For a collection that drops at $25.90 a piece, that’s not nothing.
VATÍSIMO is available globally from March 26th in select Zara stores, online, and at a pop-up at 73 Spring Street in New York City.