On an otherwise gray afternoon, Severino (Seve) Alvarez’s downtown loft is an all-seasons buzz of vibrancy in myriad forms. The space is part storehouse for his personal collection of luxury goods; part art gallery (including works by George Condo, the artist whose work includes the notoriously censored art for Kanye West’s 2010 album); as well as an array of “non-general release” bags, says Alvarez, which includes Louis Vuitton—like the battery-charged light-up fiber-optic bag designed in 2019 (that sells online for $25,000). Alvarez, 35, exudes a similar technicolor dynamism in his manner: open, energetic, positive, with a can-do and will-do entrepreneurial spirit that he’s spent the last decade honing, growing, and investing in.
To the point: one could possibly buy a used car for what his entire outfit, from hat to shoes, costs. And, oh, the shoes. Sneaker culture is alive and, forgive me, kicking. If you will, take a moment to remember when you were of the age when you saved your allowance to buy some big important thing whose only value, years later, is the story of why the thing mattered to you in the first place.
Nostalgia might be priceless, but the sneakers that evoke it? Those are going to cost you. A lot. Ask Alvarez—he might even sell you the pair of exclusive Nike Air Force 1 sneakers custom-designed by celebrated artist Bryant Giles right off his feet, but then that means he wouldn’t have them.
And, as a collector of luxury goods, Alvarez’s objective in acquiring items from art pieces to timepieces is as multi-pronged as a setting for a diamond. Some he keeps, some he trades, some he sends to clients who lack the access he has to these sought-after brands. He’s a walking conduit of collaborative energy, in a baseball hat and a Supreme logo tee that he wears with a “if you know, you know” wink.
Luxury Finds
The Greenville native’s earliest memory of being wooed by the luxe lifestyle was when his father, former Atlanta Braves player Jose Alvarez, was playing baseball for the San Francisco Giants. “I remember in 1991, we were in San Francisco and my mom walked out with this really long mink coat my dad had bought her,” says Alvarez, “and there were some cameras taking pictures. We got into the limo to go to the stadium, and I was this five-year-old kid like, ‘Whoa, Mom looks really pretty in this super cool coat, what’s going on here?’” Though he later confides that kind of thing was a one-off and not the usual scene. That five-year-old grew up to be a (very fashion aware) baseball player until the plot twist when Alvarez’s own career aspirations to play in the major league, in his words, “fizzled out” at 24 years old. (Silver lining: while he was in Iowa playing on an independent team, he met his wife, Cynthia. After seven years together in Clarinda, Iowa, where she is from, the couple moved to Greenville last August with their two children, Shepherd, 4, and Arnie, 3.)
As non-linear as Alvarez’s path might appear to the casual observer, it has taken him to the front rows of Paris Fashion Week (14 times and counting), to being part owner of the Mexico Design Fair in Oaxaca, to securing the title in 2019 of creative director for Jarritos, the Mexican soda company. This came through a connection he met in an elevator on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. He was in L.A. working on his other hustle as the director of partnerships and brand development for Project Blitz, a mega-archive of rare sneakers with an undisclosed warehouse. (Women’s Wear Daily noted that if you don’t have the address, you’re not meant to be there in the first place, though celebs like Rihanna and Drake definitely are.) Blitz was founded by Alvarez’s partner and friend, Andre Ljustina. The pair were riding in an elevator a few years ago when the two teenage sons of a man riding along with them commented on their “sick, hype sneakers,” says Alvarez. From that interaction, the man, a wealthy billionaire based in Texas, met them later that day at the warehouse to buy $30,000 in sneakers. An invitation to the family’s “Kardashian-level” home, as Alvarez describes it, in Texas, and subsequent networking through the family (who were friends with the owner of Jarritos) led to Alvarez being brought on board to facilitate its collaborations with other well-known global brands.
It should be known that none of this would have likely happened if Alvarez weren’t such a likable guy.
He’s more Jay-Z than Kanye, say. Alvarez is beyond reproach and beyond the caricature that he acknowledges he can seemingly inhabit. The difference is that he has the handshakes, the deals, and the non-disclosure agreements to back it up.
Alvarez’s mission is not to just surround himself with beautiful things, which he enjoys of course, but to see that these emblems of—let’s call it what it is, “status”—find themselves in the right (and eager) hands through an extensive network that began in his baseball world back in the day. He functions as both procurer and purveyor. The intricacies of how he became this conduit is left to the ether, really, but as his heaving box of invitations from high-end brands like Vuitton, Fendi, and Dior reflects, it doesn’t matter much in the how he arrived there, but that he has a seat at the caviar-laden table. As he explains it, he went from being the “kid in the line waiting for the sneakers to sitting front row at Paris Fashion Week with icons I would only see on TV.”
The more you talk with Seve, the more you understand that his creative hustle is a byproduct of what he excels at cultivating: relationships. Varsity Goods, a boutique sneaker resale store in the Village of West Greenville, reaps the benefit of Alvarez’s hustle since he can get the products they can’t. “Seve has people that work in New York sourcing items in,” explains Ryan Mosley, co-owner of Varsity Goods, with Austin Hurley, who adds, “Seve’s really good at marketing himself to people and creating a relationship. If you present a smile, people want to talk to you, and he’s got a good smile.”
“Why not enjoy beautiful things, but not attach yourself to the value of those things?” asks Alvarez. Boom. Exactly.
Though you know what they say: find your tribe and outfit them well. Unless one of the tribe happens to be your wife. Cynthia could have her pick of the impressive stash her husband has acquired over the years, but does she care about all that? “Not at all,” says Alvarez, shaking his head with a proud and bemused smile at the yin to his yang. “My wife has bags and clothes that I have to go in and sell to someone else because she won’t even pull them out of the box. I have a Chanel bag in there that she won’t use,” says Alvarez. Sneakers and bags will come and go, but it’s like another thing they say (actually, it was Audrey Hepburn, who knew a thing or two about style herself)—the best thing to hold onto in life is each other.
