Victor Alfaro Adds Spice to New York Fashion

This story was originally published on March 25, 1992.

NEW YORK — Victor Alfaro. Who? On the evening of April 7, the 28-year-old designer from Chihuahua, Mexico, plans to answer that question when he unveils his first sportswear collection. He’s determined to take the New York fashion scene by storm, and his name is already being dropped around town.

Alfaro has snagged supermodels Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Yasmeen Ghauri, Karen Mulder and Tatjana Patitz for his 7 p.m. show at Webster Hall (the old Ritz nightclub on East 11th Street). Kevyn Aucoin will do the makeup, and Kevin Mancuso is doing the hair.

“You’ve got to get the energy at the same level as the clothes,” Alfaro said recently, while previewing his high voltage designs. They go from full-length mohair coats in vibrant yellow and pink plaid lined in shocking pink to lace or fake python chaps that slip over skintight catsuits.

His message is clear: “Sexy and very body-conscious,” very much in the school of Azzedine Alaïa, the designer he admires the most. “But,” Alfaro said, “I use a wider range of fabrics.”

Eight years ago, Alfaro — an identical twin and one of six children of a surgeon-artist — left Mexico to study communications at the University of Texas in El Paso. A few years later, his love of fashion led him to New York and FIT. After graduating in 1986, he apprenticed with Mary Ann Restivo, then joined Joseph Abboud in 1989 when Abboud was about to launch his women’s collection.

Working out of his West Village apartment, the novice designer also started a small made-to-order business. “I dress the uptown ladies, but they’re not names you would recognize,” Alfaro said. But those designs did catch the eye of Cosmopolitan, which has already given him two covers and reportedly has three more in the wings.

Now, he’s ready to tackle the designer sportswear market. So, with family backing and a lot of support from friends, he is off and running.

“It’s a mix,” he said of his fall collection, “American sportswear pieces done with a European attention to quality and that Latin sense of color. I believe in sexy, beautiful, wearable clothes for women who want to single themselves out.

“They are street or club fashions in luxury fabrics,” the designer said, adding that he picks up his inspiration from the Sound Factory — a New York club — on Saturday nights.

“It’s all very uninhibited. And my clothes are about taking luxury to that same edge.”

Research by Tonya Blazio-Licorish