A year ago, when the cultural “vibe shift” was still just a subterranean tremor, a liberal writer noted that woke inanity was a much bigger problem for liberals than conservatives.
For a conservative who lived in a conservative place and didn’t work for a woke corporation, the argument was that the odds were small that their life would be terribly upset by gender ideology, speech policing, the belief that everything was white nationalism, or the insistence on using the word LatinX.
And so now, in 2025, the year of our lord (yes, we’re allowed to say that again), we should not be surprised that woke cancellations and struggle sessions still happen as punishment for micro-aggressions and cultural appropriation. Importantly, all the targets these days are the woke themselves.
Fashion designer Willy Chavarria was the darling of the woke Left. If “Levi Wokes” were real jeans, Chavarria would have been the designer.
When Chavarria won designer of the year in 2024, he made his acceptance speech about the presidential election. He said President Donald Trump was a threat to “our rights” and “our existence as a people — as women, as immigrants, as people of color, as queer people, trans people.”
He touted his lucrative design business as an effort to change the culture and “express [a] vision of inclusivity.”
He sees his fashion shows as get-out-the-vote rallies and his clothes as challenges to the patriarchy.
At one show, he wore an ACLU T-shirt. The Washington Post described him as a designer “who see[s] the runway as an activist space.”
The media fawning was endless. Chavarria took pride in peddling “transgressions” such as “gay masculinities,” “queerness,” and “raunch.”
The world of the woke is full of profit for folks like Chavarria, but it’s also full of landmines. And poor Willy stepped on one.
His latest line of slip-on shoes is inspired by indigenous Mexican sandals. This might strike the average reader as the same sort of multiculturalism he peddled with his Chicano-influenced clothing. But wokeness has always been about inventing new sins, and Chavarria crossed some invisible line and committed the sin of appropriation.
Some Mexican officials complained to the U.S. press, particularly those from the Oaxaca state, after which Chavarria named his shoes. Chavarria apologized, saying he regretted making his shoes so Mexican.
“I am deeply sorry that the shoe was appropriated in this design and not developed in direct and meaningful partnership with the Oaxacan community,” he said.
Adidas followed in the groveling: “The ‘Oaxaca Slip-On’ was inspired by a design from Oaxaca, rooted in the tradition of Villa Hidalgo Yalálag. We offer a public apology and reaffirm our commitment to collaborate with Yalálag in a respectful dialogue that honors their cultural legacy.”
The telling contrast is between American Eagle (attacked on Good Morning America and MSNBC as peddling white supremacy) and Adidas: Why did AE say “buzz off” to the woke scolds, while Adidas and Chavarria bowed down and begged forgiveness?
It’s because wokeness only has power over those who give it power. In other words, the woke scolds can only cancel woke.