A thin haze enveloped the backstage at Willy Chavarria‘s latest New York Fashion Week show. No, it wasn’t slow-moving fog clouds rolling in from the runway a few feet away. Instead, it was a cloud of Axe body spray, a meteorological phenomenon known to just about anyone who hit puberty in the 2000s when trigger-happy teenagers would turn the ostensibly palatable body-freshener into a pungent poison.
And so Axe became something you grow out of — or should. Adults, the logic goes, should be seeking finer scents: liquids that come in fancy bottles, with notes of bergamot, leather and vetiver.
But nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Nowadays, many men — in conjunction with newfound affection for fashion from the ’90s and ’00s — are fantasizing about simpler times, when Axe was the only option, and many are eager to remaster the “Double Pits to Chesty.”
This includes Chavarria, a CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year nominee. For his eponymous brand’s latest New York Fashion Week show, he turned to Axe for aromatic support. He sprayed the models with a healthy dose before they strutted out onto the runway. Then, there were cans of it caddied all across his after-party. To the surprise of many, Axe found itself at the center of the fashion world once again.
“I was looking for partners for the SS23 show – but they had to make sense,” Chavarria tells GP. “When I learned that Axe was coming back to the scene, I was so excited because this is a product I actually have used and enjoyed. It brings me back to my younger days.”
