Chufy (Q2783)
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Chufy is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Chufy |
Chufy is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Sofia Sanchez de Betak travels far and wide with Chufy; past collections have referenced Japan, Morocco, and Scandinavia, even, more recently, metaphysical journeys of the mind. India’s “chaos and zen” were the jumping off point for her this season. “The concept is those two juxtaposed energies that I’ve experienced in my visits,” she said over a Zoom call.With her graphic design background, her Chufy designs are print-forward. This season’s are inspired by various elements of India’s culture: matchbox prints and peacock motifs, and other patterns lifted from the country’s architecture and its native plants. It being pre-fall, there are both printed wovens and knitted jacquards and intarsias.Sanchez de Betak is no minimalist, but she’s taken in fashion’s turn towards the quiet; zen trumps chaos here. A tailored matching set that combines ivory pleat-front trousers and a sleeveless wrap top with subtle black stitching, as well as a short-sleeve caftan dress in a muted green and blue stripe both felt new for her. Placement prints, as opposed to the all-over prints she’s known for, are another way she’s adapting to the current mood. The lookbook’s opener, a one-shoulder sundress with palm trees decorating its hem, is more soigné than usual, while still retaining Chufy’s bohemian spirit.
4 December 2023
What if we let plants take over again and they were the dominant species, not the other way around? That was the question Sofia Sanchez de Betak asked when designing this Chufy collection. The clothes are abloom with floral designs of all kinds and other natural world motifs. Irises lavishly unfurl their petals on a cute little pleated top and pant set, and an Edenic landscape dotted with palm trees and flying creatures spreads across the bottom of a playful halter dress. Sanchez de Betak lives most of the year in Mallorca and its colors and rhythms have seeped into her work. She was in Milan last week to showcase a collaboration with Max&Co. that intermingles that brand’s contemporary basics with her flora and fauna embroideries, making them less basic in the process. Chufy’s heart and soul is in those details, even more so now that Sanchez de Betak is tapping into her wilder nature.“The entire collection is kind of a hymn to the transformative power of the flowers and wisdom of plants. Now there’s separation between them and us,” she said. “My dream vision is for a symbiotic future.” She’s tapping into plant magic with her other project: at her Journey Within retreats she hosts healing ceremonies led by local practitioners. There are many routes to finding your bliss. For print lovers like Sanchez de Betak, the macro peacock feather print dress in shades of yellow and gold, and another more fanciful option featuring hallucinogenic mushrooms would be good places to start.
29 September 2023
Sofia Sanchez de Betak has modeled for years, though never for a Chufy lookbook. She’s preferred to keep her designer-founder hat firmly in place in the half decade she’s been operating this label. But as she continues to move away from the destination-based concepts of Chufy’s earlier era, she’s thinking more about the self discovery of spirituality, meditation rituals, and tools like astrology and tarot cards. She’s named this collection The Journey Within, and since it’s personal for her, she decided to step in front of the camera.It’s a sort of phase one of a new project. Sanchez de Betak plans to launch The Journey Within Retreats. She creates the environments—anyone who’s been to her homes in New York, Paris, or Deia, Mallorca, knows she has a knack for this—and books the practitioners to lead guests on healing ceremonies. And should her guests need dresses for those ceremonies, this resort collection will be a useful starting point.Sanchez de Betak recommends spare, simple designs for the guided rituals, so there are a couple of easy white maxi dresses with colorful embroideries. And for the blissed-out post-retreat real-world reentry, there are jean and cargo jackets, the latter of which is embroidered with the name of the collection.Denim is a new category for the label, however Chufy’s specialty remains prints. This season’s “mother print” was created in the style of 1970s artists like John Alcorn Kiyoshi Awazu, and Mati Klarwein, who Sanchez de Betak discovered in design school, and features fantastical animals, magic mushrooms, and shooting stars trailing rainbows. It’s the most psychedelic thing she’s ever done, but the tie-dye swirls, astrological symbols, and tarot card prints aren’t far behind. Definitely a fun trip.
5 June 2023
When Sofia Sanchez de Betak launched Chufy in 2017, it was inspired by her travels, each season a different location. It meant that her designs have often felt like getaway clothes, easy pieces to wear on vacation, or to help you feel like you were on a trip even if a staycation was the best you could do. Now, the brand is in growth mode, expanding its knit category and pushing further into outerwear, and so Sanchez de Betak swapped the dreamy destinations she’s highlighted in the past for grittier, urban Berlin.She visited the city for the first time as a “nerdy graphic design student”; it’s where she developed a taste for Bauhaus motifs and graffiti prints, both of which appear in the new collection. That may sound like a radical departure for a woman who most recently was talking about the Northern Lights. In fact, this season isn’t such a big departure, but there were elements that looked playful and fresh—and Berlinish—starting with a printed corduroy jacket with Bauhaus vibes (it helped that it was photographed in front of a graffiti’d construction site).Tie-dye effects are a favorite motif for Sanchez de Betak. Where last season they appeared on a strappy sundress with a billowy skirt, this season they were printed on a cool matching stretch viscose top and asymmetrical hem skirt. That’s representative of the shift in mood. Fall’s souvenir jacket and jumpsuit come in military drab with “Meet me in Berlin” embroidered on the back.
16 February 2023
This Chufy collection was photographed in the Norwegian countryside. Sofia Sanchez de Betak went chasing the Northern Lights after Covid, and the place made an impression on her. Other aurora borealis chasers commit the dancing waves of lights to their cameras, once they find them, and quickly call it a night, but not Sanchez de Betak. To really appreciate cosmic time, slowing down is necessary. She recommends bundling up and maybe even bringing along some hot water bottles—she’s now making covers for the old-fashioned devices with repurposed fabric scraps from old collections, and selling them on her website.At Chufy, the smocked dresses, quilted jackets, romper sets, and other easy-wearing bohemian shapes that Sanchez de Betak favors are refreshed from season to season with new prints. The aurora borealis phenomenon inspired her pre-fall, but in the abstract way that all of her travels inform the Chufy aesthetic. The swirling patterns here are more impressionistic than they are literal.Four years in, Sanchez de Betak decided Chufy’s business practices didn’t align with her principles. “Why do we have so many samples?” she said she asked her team. “I decided I only want to give our customers what we find super-special.” Where the collection is growing is with its knits. Ruffled shoulders on a melange ribbed sweater and colorful embroidery on a cable-knit crewneck are two of the offering’s small special details.
14 December 2022
In 2019, 24 hours after making her Met Gala appearance in a custom Mango gown, Sofia Sanchez de Betak touched down in Nepal to help the Bally team in an environmental expedition to clean up Mount Everest. She also got to explore the city of Kathmandu, which became the inspiration for her spring 2023 collection. “I’m not really in a place or time in my life where I want to travel as much. So we went back to that trip for inspiration, and I had all these incredible images of tigers, temples, and flags,” said the designer. “I was going to all the local markets, and I dug around, and I found all these local foods and religious imagery, and it was very inspiring for the collection.”Some hero prints this season represented traditional Nepalese beliefs. The marigold flower symbolizes that nature already offers complexity and beauty and that precious stones and embellishments are unnecessary. That relates to how Sanchez de Betak wants her clothing to feel—comfortable, light, and wearable in the real world by real women. While the public is used to seeing Sanchez de Betak in glamorous looks walking into the season’s biggest shows, she feels the most comfortable in simple clothes. “I love those souvenir T-shirts you can get at the markets for next to nothing,” she said. “They have a raw design that you can always mix with anything, including printed skirts and dresses from Chufy.”In another print from the collection she added imagery of temples and mountains onto colorful puffer vests, tailored blazers, and crochet knits. “The prints go back to the DNA of the brand, in terms of the imagery, but shape-wise we are introducing a lot of newer designs with lots of knitwear and crochet tops and skirts, which contrasts with what we normally do,” said Sanchez de Betak. Since her recent move to Mallorca, she’s realized that knitwear is not a one-knit-fits-all situation. Instead, she has come to develop lighter cardigans to layer on top of swimwear for muggy summer days, as well as chunkier knit sets to cozy up near the fire pit when the nights get colder. “We just launched our knitwear from the Patagonia fall 2022 collection, and there were no returns,” she said. “That means the product is doing well, and the customers really like it.”Unlike other seasons, where Sanchez de Betak, as the face of her brand, models in look book shoots for social media and press assets, she took a step back this season.
And you might have noticed that the designer has been absent from her usual spots at Fashion Week this season. She’s decided to focus more on family, mindfulness, and meditation, and her spring offer reflects this recent journey. “The purpose of this collection was to connect with all the wisdom from these cultures that are so different from ours,” she said.
27 September 2022
While most of us know the ancient wonders of Egypt from our history books at school, Sofia Sanchez de Betak has encountered them for real—first, as a teenager traveling the world with her mother, and most recently as a mother traveling with her own daughter. For resort 2023, Sanchez de Betak looked to the Siwa Oasis, where Cleopatra used to take her beauty baths, and the colorful Nubian villages, where the designer celebrated her daughter’s birthday and found inspiration for a new range of hand-painted and embroidered prints.Along with a bright color palette full of scarab blues and golden yellows, Sanchez de Betak also showed a newly revamped line of anti-UV swimwear that she’s been working on perfecting sinceresort 2020. Made with recycled fabrics, it’s a logical next step for the vacation loving designer, and fits right in with her shimmering knit kaftans and vibrant cotton poplin dresses.Sanchez de Betak also drew inspiration from her recently launched fall collection for the summer-ready quilted vests that she suggests be styled the Chufy way—mixing and matching prints and layering over an easy-breezy pants set. She wants to make the lives of the women who shop her collection as easy as possible, and says she relates to people who “don’t have time and are busy doing other things like working or being moms, but still want to look good.”And while her collections are expanding beyond the seaside towns of Australia and the Mediterranean, this jetsetter is also learning to take a step back and enjoy her sanctuary of Mallorca. For her, collections are a “moment in life, not a season or a trend,” and what she loves most is seeing the Chufy women in the places she calls home.
13 June 2022
For her first fall collection, designer Sofia Sanchez de Betak looked to her beloved Patagonia for inspiration. Each of her collections is inspired by her travels, and how a trip can influence how you dress. “When you come back from a trip you feel like you’ve changed so much and learned so much,” she said. “The world has stayed the same but you have evolved in a way.” This time around, she’s especially familiar with her source material. Patagonia has a special place in her heart: not only did she get married there, she also spent many holidays there growing up. “It’s a visual of my family holiday in a way, turned into fashion,” she said of her new offering.It’s fitting for a fall collection to feel cozier than spring, and Sanchez de Betak achieved that in part because of her familiarity with the region, which encompasses glaciers and ski mountains as well as the more mild lake district in the north. As usual, the prints were key to the collection. Two were riffs on paisley, but distorted and embellished with Argentinian flora. Others were inspired by glacier ice, rock formations and mountains. Sanchez de Betak expanded her knit collection into a full range of cashmere pieces. The balaclavas, sweaters, and quarter zips added a utilitarian touch to the collection. The wearable designs are packable, but also can imbue every day with a little bit of adventure, no matter where you’re going.
24 February 2022
Sofía Sanchez de Betak’s Chufy collections are always inspired by and designed for her far-flung travels; each billowing dress or floaty blouse is like a wearable memory of her favorite places, from Kenya’s Masai Mara to Kyoto. Her pre-fall 2022 collection follows the same rubric, drawing on the landscape and attitude of Australia. As a teenager, she spent time on the continent and fulfilled her dream of diving the Great Barrier Reef. That influenced a range of deep-sea prints—coral, sea urchins, waves, anemones—seen on familiar caftans, organic-cotton blouses, and pajama sets.More surprisingly, the coral motif appeared on a quilted zip-up bomber jacket; on our Zoom, De Betak was wearing an abstract watercolor version over a simple black turtleneck. It’s Chufy’s first piece of outerwear and represents an evolution toward true wardrobing for the brand, with clothes you can wear year-round wherever you are—on holiday, at home, or at work. A second-skin jersey turtleneck in a range of prints and solids was another new addition, a sleeker look for days you aren’t in the mood for volume and a pragmatic layering piece for winterizing those dreamy dresses. “I’m surrounded by prints all day, and sometimes I just need a clean slate,” De Betak explained.All of that said, she isn’t giving up on the brand’s peripatetic ethos anytime soon. Her family’s next big trip is a tour of Egypt, which will doubtless offer a trove of ideas and inspiration for her 2022 and 2023 collections.
16 December 2021
Sofia Sanchez de Betak has been spending as much time as she can in Mallorca. Its island energy rubbed off on her new collection, which officially took its cues from another famous isle, Jamaica. Sanchez de Betak and her husband are inveterate travelers; when she founded Chufy, it was built on the idea of holiday souvenirs and vacation clothes cut in city-friendly fabrics. But a year-and-a-half of pandemic has served to blur once firm distinctions between those categories. Dress codes have relaxed across the board and women have grown accustomed to feeling comfortable everywhere.That can lead to a certain sameness in stores and e-commerce sites. Chufy’s defining characteristic is its colorful prints. This season, seaside motifs decorate shoulder-baring sundresses, smocked camis, and paperbag waist shorts, as well as button-downs, wrap skirts, and quilted vests. The news is a growing selection of knits, which mix and match easily with the wovens. In these pictures, Sanchez de Betak has styled a space dye cardigan sweater with a bikini bottom. The backstory: With an eye to opening a store IRL in New York, she’s expanding her island state of mind for cooler climates and a year-round wardrobe.
20 September 2021
New York City is getting its first Chufy store. Sofia Sanchez de Betak says she’s looking at a September opening. Her four-year-old label is a resource for poet blouses, robe dresses, jumpsuits, and the like in transportive prints. They’re great vacation clothes, but the secret of their appeal is that wearing them can help conjure and sustain that special-holiday feeling, wherever you may be. It’s a state of mind that Sanchez de Betak strives to maintain. Her email sign off reads: “Please excuse the briefness and delay of my emails, they take way too much time of my life already.”For this resort collection, she tapped into memories of Italian seaside getaways, giving her floral motifs names like Amalfi, Apulia, and Capri, and riffing on Missoni’s famous zigzags. In the look book she paired a one-shoulder maillot with paper-bag-waist shorts and a voluminous blouse with belted high-waist bikini briefs, the way she might do it herself for a post-swim lunch in town. Solid-colored pieces, like a strawberry red tunic and baggy cropped pants in almost-black navy, played counterpoint to the lively prints. The New Yorkers will appreciate them.
14 June 2021
With travel curtailed, if not at a complete standstill, the peripatetic Sofia Sanchez de Betak did a different kind of exploring this year. A 23andMe kit revealed that the Buenos Aires–born, Paris-based creative has roots in Romania. Her latest Chufy collection plays up that connection with prints based on the country’s traditional embroideries and carpets.In her label’s early days, Sanchez de Betak referenced regional silhouettes as much as patterns and motifs, but nearing the three-year mark Chufy is less obviously about destination wear or travel souvenirs—a kimono from Japan, a djellaba from Morocco—than it is a print-focused collection of easy-wearing pieces for city dwellers with a bohemian spirit.Jumpsuits, for example, are an essential component of Sanchez de Betak’s everyday wardrobe—she appreciates their one-and-done simplicity—and so they’re a focal point of her latest collection. Her instinct was to tone down the ruffles and frills that have characterized previous Chufy outings. If the low-key attitude was a nod to the new COVID-19 reality, the belts and sneakers that these clothes are styled with are a reflection of Sanchez de Betak’s own wardrobe. “I’m laid back in my everyday style,” she said. But also ready to hit the road when the opportunity arises.
21 December 2020
What do you do when wanderlust is the beating heart of your brand, and the world is in lockdown? Sofia Sanchez de Betak was not long back from a New Year’s trip to Myanmar when the coronavirus went global. We all know what happened after that. In the early months of the pandemic, Sanchez de Betak thought she might have had to shutter her young label. Chalk it up to a lean company structure or sheer determination, she persisted.Her return trip to Myanmar, a dream project that would’ve brought her fashion industry colleagues and friends to the conflict-ridden country for community service work, has been shelved, but this week she begins selling a collection whose palette and prints were inspired by the country’s Buddhist sites. It’s a smaller collection than Sanchez de Betak typically makes, and one more focused on easy pieces than previous outings. In the look book, many of those pieces are styled with an oversized pair of cutoff jeans. In silk-cotton voiles, the dresses have a similar sense of uncomplicated ease. As ever, prints are what give Chufy its personality. Lotus flowers and mandalas are two of the lively recurring motifs.
10 September 2020
Sofia Sanchez de Betak is headed to Myanmar with her family for the holidays. She’ll visit the country’s historic Buddhist temples, take a boat ride down a river, visit the city of Yangon, and spend some time at the beach. “I need one big adventure a year,” she said—and this will certainly qualify, especially with her not-yet-two-year-old in tow. Months from now, Myanmar references will turn up in Sanchez de Betak’s Chufy collection. For her latest offering, an earlier trip to Arizona provided the fodder.Travel is both the cause and effect for Sanchez de Betak; the prints are lifted from the far-flung places she visits and the throw-on-and-go silhouettes—sundresses, peasant tops, jumpsuits, and swimwear (a recent addition)—are the pieces she likes to pack for her getaways. Of course, the ease of her clothes make them the type of thing she reaches for in the city too. She modeled the versatility of a printed-cotton poplin jumpsuit that’s shown in the look book with white tennis shoes by teaming it with a chunky turtleneck sweater and stacked heel boots for a showroom appointment. The point is to carry the vacation state of mind with you.
10 December 2019
Like the previous Chufy collection, this one took Peru and its handicrafts as a starting point. Also like that one, the new offering wears its inspirations more lightly than it did in the past. You’d have to look very closely to discern the origins of the prints. Designer Sofia Sanchez de Betak worked hard at abstracting and obscuring them. Either that or she worked in solids; the chalky pastels suit the season. It’s smart to expand and evolve in a crowded market. What hasn’t changed is the general aesthetic. These are dresses and easy pieces to pack for vacation getaways or to conjure that spirit without having to go through airport security.At a showroom appointment, Sanchez de Betak wore the lean jumpsuit that opens the look book. It’s another nice development. Like the shirt dress that follows a few looks later, it has a more streamlined cut and mien—lighter on the frills than other items here. Not that she’s given up on the little details. A white cotton peasant dress was elaborately hand-embroidered in multicolor flowers—so elaborately that Sanchez de Betak produced a print version more in keeping with Chufy’s typical price range. Other pieces were embellished more sparingly with different-size beads. It’s been about two years since Sanchez de Betak launched Chufy and it’s growing. She said an expanded range of knits is on the horizon next season.
17 September 2019
Peru is the destination that inspired Sofía Sanchez de Betak’s colorful new Chufy collection, but it’s not as obvious as it once was that this is a label oriented around the idea of travel. The reasons for that are at least twofold. One, as the line has expanded, it’s grown beyond the souvenir-type pieces you pick up on holidays—the kimonos from Japan, the caftans from Morocco. And two, printed frocks of the sort Sanchez de Betak is specializing in are trending up and down the market. Their popularity has been a boon for the Chufy brand; it’s growing by leaps and bounds.But ubiquity does pose its problems, so, Sanchez de Betak is clever to be thinking beyond the pretty boho dresses she’s known for. The most noteworthy development for Resort was the addition of swimwear. Bikinis, plunge-front maillots, and rash guards that could do double-duty with cutoffs or a peasant skirt were cut in lively patterns with built-in SPF. Elsewhere, a strapless white cotton dress with delicate smocking at the torso was another novelty. Until now, Sanchez de Betak has let her prints do the talking, but with this easy number it was the surface treatment that created interest. A strappy sundress with homespun fan embroideries was another nice step outside the label’s comfort zone.
18 June 2019
The star of Sofía Sanchez de Betak’s latest Chufy collection made its debut last month at New York’s amfAR gala. De Betak herself modeled the effortless emerald green wrap dress made precious with gold bullion embroideries of constellations and crescent moons. She paired it with red ankle strap heels, but in the lookbook it’s worn with black riding boots. The difference is illustrative of the versatility of the Chufy offering, which until now has consisted of simple shapes in lively prints—the kind of things you might pick up on vacation, only in fabrics you’ll still want to wear when you get home.With several seasons under her belt, De Betak is expanding the collection for Pre-Fall. Those well-made black riding boots will be sold on her e-commerce site, and she’s added chunky knits and outerwear to her mix. What distinguishes Chufy’s coats from the many options already out there are the thread embroideries splashed across the back of a single-breasted style and the front of a collared poncho. This round’s vacation inspiration was Dubai, so her easy dresses, pajama sets, and jumpsuits are variously illustrated with prints of desert or souk scenes, or Arabic calligraphy. Panels of geometric multicolored embroideries elevate two of the other key dresses, as well.
12 March 2019
Sofía Sanchez de Betak has two newborns, her young child and her fledgling collection, Chufy, which is inspired by her travels. You’d think that maybe the former would impede the latter, but nothing doing. Not long after her little girl was born, the family was off to Marrakech for a research trip for this collection.New motherhood does inform the line in other subtle ways. De Betak is newly price conscious; she says she’d rather take a hit on her profit margin than let her dresses inch up into four-figure territory, so the reversible shifts and robes, with different silks inside and out, are good deals. The double-faced nature of the shift also makes it an easy dress to wear for women of many sizes, including those post-baby bump.Effortless elegance is the general ethos here. The organizing principle behind Chufy is to bring the spirit of holiday dressing to the city in prints that conjure a place, but fabrics that are urbane and modern. This season’s prints of Medina domes and spires and abstracted Moroccan rugs are lush and evocative.Spring marks the first time De Betak has used a sustainable material made from recycled fibers. That fits with her love of travel; climate change affects all areas of the globe, but regions that typically experience extremes, like Morocco, will feel them even more dramatically.
17 September 2018
It’s a new season, which means Sofía Sanchez de Betak’s Chufy line has a fresh starting point. After collections devoted to Argentina and Japan, this time around it’s Kenya. De Betak did a 10-day horseback safari across the Maasai Mara two summers ago, in which, among other adventures, she forged a river with water up to her horse’s neck and encountered charging elephants. After days wearing fitted riding clothes, she spent her evenings in loose-fitting, flowing frocks, including, she said, a stunner from Valentino’s Spring 2016 collection, which was likewise devoted to Africa. De Betak tends to be one the best dressed women wherever she goes, and the Kenyan savannah was no exception.With its similar wild-animal motifs, this Chufy collection would indeed make charming campside attire on safari. But thanks to easy silhouettes, like a shirtdress with a relaxed cut and prominent pockets, it’s likely to be at home wherever it roams, in the wild or in the city. There are also matching top-and-pants sets and robes of the sort that were found in her Japan offering last season, only with an African filter rather than a Far Eastern one. Effortless shapes and eye-catching prints mixed well is the Chufy formula. The shirtdresses are cut with or without the contrast border of traditional Kenyan kangas. She also sourced some authentic kangas and put them through a washing and dyeing process; they will be sold as one-of-a-kinds on her e-commerce site when the collection launches this week.De Betak is currently vacationing in Peru, as followers of her Instagram account know, so there’s bound to be an Andean collection in Chufy’s future.
18 July 2018
Influencer-led brands are proliferating these days—see Attico, see Totême, see Rouje by Jeanne Damas. Sofía Sanchez de Betak, who launched her label Chufy a year ago, is a street style favorite of photographers Phil Oh and Tommy Ton, and she has a robust, engaged following on Instagram, but she earned her fashion bona fides behind the camera at agencies including Lloyd & Co., AR New York, and Laird & Partners. Those experiences taught her the ins and outs of branding, and as a result, the concept she’s come up with is quite savvy.The Chufy collection—Chufy being de Betak’s nickname—is inspired by her travels and made in partnership with The Luxury Collection. Season one was Argentina (from whence she hails), this season is Japan, the next will by Kenya, and so on and so forth down the line. The rotating series of destination-based offerings is a way to capitalize on her love of adventure—when asked where she wants to go next, she exclaims, “everywhere.” And, even better, there’s flexibility built into the business plan. Presumably, as the label grows it will also allow her to be reactive to the market. Call it kismet, but kimonos are having a major moment.De Betak says she came up with the idea because, though she loves to shop while traveling, she often finds that when she gets her discoveries home, the silhouette is too traditional, or the fabric is too stiff or heavy for city life. Chufy is designed to evoke the “experiential, joyful feeling you get from souvenirs,” without the drawbacks. The kimonos,nibushiki, and pajama sets now available at The Webster, Bergdorf Goodman, and MatchesFashion.com come in silk, silk-cotton blends, and cupro, and they are indeed rather light. But their real appeal lies in their lively, modern prints, including one charming motif that features anonbuhimobaby carrier—a personal nod to de Betak’s other new creation, her 3-month-old daughter.
17 April 2018