Sitting in a Los Angeles hotel room on a recent afternoon, where a photo shoot for his latest collection is underway, Willy Chavarria is in tears.
The 2024 CFDA menswear designer of the year is trying to find the words to describe how Donald Trump’s election victory has affected his immigrant family, whom he’s been visiting while in California.
“I’m here with my family, and racism has played such a big part in their lives — especially for the older generation,” Chavarria said, his head bowed as he wiped his eyes. “It’s hitting them really hard right now.”
Known for his Chicano-inspired take on menswear, Chavarria is among the most outspoken in what has become a dwindling class of fashion leaders who have consistently advocated for progressive causes on the runway, Instagram and beyond.
For his fall 2017 collection, Chavarria put models in cages as a statement on the Trump administration’s border policies, which separated children from their families. He’s adorned garments with inverted American flags and, at September’s New York Fashion Week, handed out copies of the US Constitution — provided by the ACLU — as part of his Spring 2025 collection, aptly titled América.
Donald Trump’s election earlier this month, and surprisingly robust support for the candidate among young and diverse voters, has caused some in the industry to question whether there’s a future for fashion’s activists. Brands were already becoming wary of speaking out in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2023 reversal of affirmative action, which gave legal teeth to growing pushback against corporate diversity initiatives. A conservative backlash to brands like Target and Bud Light for supporting LGBTQ rights put a financial cost on companies’ political speech.
Still, Trump’s victory and the looming policy threats it brings — mass deportation, tariffs, and divisive stances on women’s, LGBTQ, and immigrant rights — are likely to create new pressure for fashion and beauty brands to rejoin the discourse. Whether they intend to speak up or stay out of it, brands and retailers need to be ready to explain that decision to their customers, experts say.
“We can draw on what we learned from Trump’s first term in office,” said Adam Fetcher, a former Patagonia executive who, along with former The North Face executive Eric Raymond, launched the brand agency Big Future this month to help brands effectively engage in politics.
“There will be plenty of flash points in the discourse and it behoves brands to start to focus on where their commitment lies,” he said. “Or your brand is at highest risk of turning into a negative flash point.”
What Advocacy Looks Like
There’s a difference between basic corporate social responsibility initiatives or ESG obligations — like paying fair wages, monitoring one’s climate impact or supply chain transparency — and true advocacy. Advocacy pushes brands to “step outside their sphere of direct influence” and actively support causes and policy-driven issues such as immigration, women’s and minority rights and education, said Fetcher, also a former senior official in the Obama administration.
“This can include providing financial support to organisations that are on the front lines, using creative superpowers to create content, engage audiences, raise awareness and mobilise [people] through calls to action,” he said.
How much fashion engages in activism spans a broad spectrum — from Patagonia, whose founder Yvon Chouinard and his family transferred ownership of the company in 2022 to a nonprofit and a trust dedicated to combating climate change, to mass-market and luxury players that have traditionally avoided political commentary altogether.
The most effective advocacy aligns with a brand’s ethos, products, and the values of its core customers or workforce. For instance, it made sense for Nike, with its many Black athlete endorsers, to support Black Lives Matter in 2016, just as a makeup brand might champion women’s rights or a clothing company serving ethnic minorities might advocate for Indigenous rights.
At Glossier, which built its brand on the premise of “democratising beauty,” its advocacy centres on “equity, inclusion [and] representation,” emphasising its mostly women corporate staff and customer base, said Roya Shariat, the brand’s director of social impact and communications.
In October, ahead of the election, the brand placed an ad in The New York Times featuring a woman’s bare breasts (with areolas concealed) and the tagline: “Vote for your daughter’s future, vote for your grandmother’s legacy.” The not-so-subtle message took aim at Trump’s anti-abortion rhetoric and highlighted the brand’s donations to Ignite National, a 55-year-old nonprofit preparing women to run for office, and Reproductive Freedom for All, a pro-choice organisation funding abortion access.
“We’ve never shied away from being in this space and having a point of view,” said Glossier chief marketing officer Kleona Mack.
This year, despite legal challenges from conservative groups targeting similar initiatives, the brand doubled down on its Glossier Grant Programme. Launched in 2020, the programme offers $50,000 grants to Black-founded emerging brands and has distributed over $2 million to date. In August, it expanded to include a $100,000 alumni award for past grantees.
The brand has also supported localised advocacy efforts, donating to RAICES in Texas, which advocates for immigrants and asylum seekers, and the Wild West Access Fund in Nevada, which provides financial assistance for abortion care.
At his brand, Chavarria has donated proceeds from a capsule collection to the ACLU and used his high-profile New York Fashion Week shows as call to actions in their own right for causes like immigrant and LGBTQ rights — efforts he says he plans “to continue in a stronger way” over the next four years.
“I do believe that in fashion right now — there just isn’t room to be frivolous and ignore what’s going on,” he said. “It’s just inexcusable now.”
Creating an Advocacy Action Plan
Under Trump, some brand experts anticipate a renewed wave of consumer and employee demands for corporate action, similar to the backlash sparked by his so-called “Muslim ban” just weeks into his first presidency. Brands without a history or positive track record of advocacy and social impact risk being caught unprepared when public calls for accountability resurface.
For companies that have historically avoided taking a stand, the period leading up to inauguration day on Jan. 20 offers a brief window to begin building a case for how they contribute to the public good, said Scott Markman, founder and president of MonogramGroup, a global branding agency.
“The murder of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests is a prime example — in the aftermath, we saw every company under the sun looking at themselves and saying, ‘holy crap, we don’t have anything going on to point to here,’” said Fetcher.
The key for brands is to focus on one or two issues that resonate deeply with their employees and customers and work quietly but intentionally to build a track record of meaningful action, said Mark Lipton, professor at Parsons School of Design, corporate advisor, and author of Mean Men: The Perversion of America’s Self-Made Man. Donations to nonprofits, incentivising employee volunteerism or collaborations with grassroots organisations are examples.
“Don’t be opportunistic,” Lipton said.” This is not a moment to scurry about … but to look deeply within at what your vision is and what it’s telling you about what you stand for.”
Historically, causes like education, environmental safety, public health, and the welfare of children and families have been considered generally safe for brands to support. However, issues like police reform, LGBTQ rights, racial equity, and immigration policies have long been challenging and have become even more polarising under Trump. Still, brands like Nike and Patagonia have found upside in throwing support behind causes like these because they feel authentic to their brand ethos and matter to their employees and customers, Markman said.
“There’s a difference between being lukewarm versus being measured,” he said.
Of course, many fashion and beauty brands may gamble on a resurgence in activism not materialising, choosing to stay silent unless an issue becomes so egregious that taking a stand feels unavoidable — though they may lack the substance to back it up. There’s also a chance that consistently staying quiet could lead some brands’ consumers to stop expecting input from them, regardless of how bad things get.
Even so, experts argue there’s no reason for brands not to be prepared.
Fashion and beauty firms should proactively develop “content in the can” that addresses issues relevant to their customers and employees, carefully considering when to amplify those messages, Markman said. They should “obsess over authenticity” and, whenever possible, feature real people directly affected by these issues in their messaging, Lipton said.
“This isn’t a time for brands to be compelled into silence,” Shariat said. “The question is not, ‘Is it our place?’ The question is, ‘Can we make an impact? Where and how?’”
