Willy Chavarria’s Comunión
The building’s story is as strange as the building itself. In 1965, the French Communist Party was looking for a new headquarters and set its sights on Niemeyer. At the time, Niemeyer had fled the military coup in Brazil and come to Paris in exile — he was a communist himself. Construction began in 1968 and the building opened in 1971; the dome was only completed in 1980. Jean Prouvé designed the glass façades, while Paul Chemetov and Jean Deroche collaborated on the project. The structure rests on just five large reinforced-concrete pillars, its foundations thirty-five metres deep. Niemeyer himself compared the shape of the dome to a pregnant woman. Since 2007, the building has been listed as a historic monument in France — yet inside, it still breathes, still carrying the memory of a party, an architect, an exile.
The moment I stepped through the door, the city fell away behind me. The vast hall beneath the dome resembled no show venue I had ever entered. At its centre was a circular floor covered in green carpet, ringed by low white stools. The honeycomb-textured concrete of the ceiling softened the light rather than hardening it, bathing the whole space in a calm radiance. Here, the runway was not separated from the audience; no one sat higher than anyone else. Everyone was gathered within the same circle, around the same centre. In that moment, I sensed why Willy Chavarria had chosen to present his collection, titled Comunión, precisely here. In Spanish, comunión means not only communion, but also being together and sharing a common feeling. Before the first look had even appeared, that feeling had already found its place within the architecture.
When the light changed, so did the space. The concrete surfaces that had stood silent a moment before began to move with the clothes. Oscar Niemeyer’s curves and Willy Chavarria’s silhouettes completed one another; strong shoulders, wide trousers and voluminous jackets struck a surprising harmony with the building’s fluid lines. It was as though the collection had not been placed in this hall after the fact, but had been waiting for years to walk beneath that dome. As the first looks went by, Chavarria’s design language revealed itself in all its clarity. Broad-shouldered double-breasted suits, generously pleated trousers, wide-collared shirts and the Big Willy boxer waistbands showing above the trousers are pieces that have now become his signature. This season, however, the same silhouettes carried a softer, calmer attitude. The strength was still there, but it now made itself felt not through display, but through a quiet self-assurance.
The stifling heat that had gripped Paris had seeped into the collection itself. Shirts fell open, fabrics brushed lightly against the body rather than gripping it, organza moved with the air as the models walked, and even leather softened rather than appearing hard. Then the colours began to multiply. Mint green, lavender, butter yellow and watermelon red rose out of the black like memories. The wallpapers, tablecloths and pillowcases of the Chicano homes that inspired Chavarria, along with the photographs of Louis Carlos Bernal, now lived on in the fabrics. The floral prints were there not to look romantic, but to carry a memory, a home and a culture.
Throughout the show, I kept thinking of something Chavarria said in an interview: “How do we hold on to joy in the midst of so much darkness?” Perhaps Comunión was not a definitive answer to that question. But for the hour spent beneath that dome, it showed that architecture, clothes and people could come together around the same feeling. When the show ended, people slowly rose from their seats. I stayed where I was for a few more minutes. When I stepped outside, Paris was still hot. I turned and looked back at Espace Niemeyer one last time. It is not only their architecture that makes certain buildings memorable; the moments lived inside them also become, over time, an inseparable part of them. That day, Comunión seemed to have quietly merged into the memory of this building.