Álvaro Díaz Opens Up About His Sayonara Tour, Creating Custom Looks, and His Next Chapter

When you step inside the venue of one of Álvaro Díaz’s Sayonara Tour stops, you can immediately tell the star has had a hand in everything the light touches — from the visuals to the costuming. “You have to be involved in it all. If not, people can tell,” the star tells Teen Vogue over a video call from his native Puerto Rico, just a week after the tour’s finale. “I feel like when people come to my shows, it's a little more than just, ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to sing along.’ It’s more like, ‘This guy made it. Let’s go support him and sing our hearts out.’ My fans go all out. I think they feel some sense of pride. It’s like they got me and I got them type sh*t.”

In honor of his latest studio album of the same name, which received rave reviews from fans and critics alike, including two Latin Grammy Award nominations, Díaz’s Sayonara Tour kicked off in México last summer. The star later took the show on the road across the US before finally arriving in Europe in April of 2025. He culminated the effort with a two-day fiesta in late May that congregated over 30,000 fans at the Coliseo José Miguel Agrelot, the biggest indoor arena in Puerto Rico, known colloquially by locals as “el Choli,” where Bad Bunny will also famously house his DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS residency later this summer.

“The tour was a beautiful frenzy from the very start in Mexico,” Díaz reflects. “With my tours, I’m very much like with my albums. I never stopped tweaking and improving things until the very last stop. I was in Mexico, and I was like, ‘Love this. I want to make it better.’ Same in the US.”

Those tweaks very much included his tour outfits. Throughout the 25+ stops on the tour, not once did Díaz wear the same clothes. “We change it all, even the setlist,” he says with a proud smile. “People leak the setlists, people leak the looks, so we are always striving to have that surprise element. If we play different songs, that creates a sense of anticipation. Same with the clothes. It’s constantly changing, so people are on the lookout. And that way it also makes each show memorable for me, you know? I can pinpoint whether it was in Barcelona or Madrid immediately. If I were to always wear the same things, I’d always be like, 'Wait, where was this?’”

Despite changing it up for every show, there is one element you can spot on any outfit Díaz wears on stage: the Sayonara cross, which he envisioned as the “iconic” element of this era and was actually inspired by French electronic duo Justice, specifically their “Stress” music video from 2013.

“I remember watching that video and just thinking it felt super iconic,” Díaz explains. The video features multiple people wreaking havoc through the city while wearing black jackets with the cross of Justice patch on the back. “There are things that budget-wise I can’t achieve yet, but having everyone on my team with the Sayonara cross on the back felt like a beautiful gesture," the star adds.

Díaz created the cross, which has become the logo for not only this tour but this era, with a designer from Colombia. “His name is Heat. We did a brainstorming session together. I told him, ‘Bro, I want to do something inspired by Justice.’ And he knocked it out of the park.”

Prior to landing on the cross design, Díaz was actually worried the tour would lack a trademark element, especially coming from his Felicilandia era. “At the show, you probably saw a lot of people wearing black leather jackets, black pants, a white shirt, and a tie,” Díaz says. "That’s because that’s what I wore during Felicilandia.”

“I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of silhouettes,” Díaz continues. “I find it iconic when artists get to a point where you can recognize them just by their silhouette, just by their contour. That feeling is what I strive for with my style choices, creating a sort of uniform where you can immediately tell it’s me. It’s not necessarily having multiple pieces, but having the same thing over and over with small tweaks. That’s what I think happened with the white buttoned up during the Adiós Felicidandia Tour.”

With that in mind, Díaz set out to look for inspiration for Sayonara, conjuring up a vision that played with light and darkness while trying to make everything visually grand and cohesive. On the sartorial side, there was one thing he had his eye on: Lots of black leather and neoprene.

To achieve the aesthetic, Díaz tapped Spanish designer Andrea Vandall for help, who actually accompanied the artist backstage for last-minute tweaks during the Spanish leg of the tour, as well as Puerto Rican designers Artistic Garments, including Kathia Lynne.

“We created everything together,” Díaz says. “I’d send them references, and we’d start the back and forth. They’d send me sketches and I’d react. If they brought a cool proposal, I’d take it, but it was more of a collaborative process done with a lot of love. I approached it the same way as creating music from scratch. When you finish the ‘fit, you’re actually attached to it. It’s like, ‘This feels good. We made it.’ So, I really loved this tour’s outfits.”

Though the Sayonara cross remains consistent throughout the tour's costuming, Díaz and his team still customize each one for every show, often adding colors to represent the city they are performing in as an homage to fans. “Everything is custom. Even at the Choli, we were sewing until the very last second. In fact, I have a fun story from el Choli. There was a part of the show where I had to change into a button up shirt and it was quite difficult to put on to the point where it made me 10 seconds late. Nobody cared, but I cared, so we changed the buttons for snap fasteners during night two. We are always tweaking, especially in Spain, since Andrea and her assistant were with us, they’d always be sewing, giving it their all until the last minute. I’d go on stage at nine, and up until eight thirty we’d be trying out stuff, seeing if the seams were good enough. Every time I had an idea, they’d deliver it.”

Díaz would relish in the rush of not knowing if an idea would come to fruition. “It’s like the backstage buzz at fashion shows,” he says. “You are like, ‘Will this work? Will it not?’ It’s a magical feeling. It’s also so cool being able to create special custom elements for surprise guests on the spot, which we did for Mexico, Spain, and el Choli. The guest would come and we’d be like, ‘Can we make them a cross with their trademark color?’ I think that’s something I’m going to take with me for future tours. When I get more budget, I’d love to even have someone get fabrics and work on more custom elements. I think it’s fun.”

You can tell by the way Díaz talks about his on-stage clothing that he’s a fashion boy through and through. It’s palpable in his tour wardrobe but also in his music, where he often interpolates fashion references.

“Fashion bars are the best kind of bars,” he says with a smile. “I’ve always loved fashion. From when I was very little, my mom would always have me dressed to the nines. I didn’t even know what that meant yet, but people would always shower me with compliments even then. Then, in my teens, I started to develop an interest in fashion. I was super inspired by Pharrell Williams and other artists I’d see on TV. I wanted to dress like them, but there was no way to get those brands in Puerto Rico.”

However, as they say, when there’s a will, there’s a way. Determined to dress like his idols, Díaz frequented one of Puerto Rico’s pioneering streetwear shops called Treats, where the Puerto Rican creative elite would congregate. He would spend all the money he didn’t have to the point where one day the owners came up to him and offered him a job when he was 18, and having just lost his, he took them up on the offer. “They knew I’d literally spend my entire check there, and I don’t know, they liked me,” Díaz says between laughs.

It was at Treats that Díaz learned to covet pieces and served the likes of Randy Ortiz Acevedo from Jowell & Randy, De la Ghetto, and even Puerto Rican legend Tego Calderón. “None of them knew I did music, though,” Díaz shyly confesses, "but I was like their little brother and learned a lot about brands and fashion. It was more than just having money to buy things. Having certain things meant something. I fell in love. I’d save so I could afford a Raf Simons tee because it made me feel special.”

The love to treasure pieces like that has stuck with Díaz, who’s already lamenting having to hang the black Ambush boots that have taken him all over the world for the Sayonara tour. “Those boots are iconic,” he says. “We also customized them with the crosses, and it's going to hurt not having them on the next tour. Everything else changed, but the boots remained the same. I feel so comfortable in them, and I’m jumping up and down during my shows, which are very energetic.”

With his Sayonara era officially in the rearview, Díaz is already looking forward to his next chapter — but, like his boots, this tour will always have a place in his heart. “I feel like I crossed off a goal that I always wanted to achieve with this tour, and I feel way closer to the artist I want to be like,” he says, getting visibly emotional.

“You have a vision you dream of when you become an artist, and I am getting there. There are so many projects I want to finish, so many beautiful things that are happening, so, thanks to all that, I want to take some time for myself to finish this new project I have in my head. I work on my projects little by little, and I’ve been working on this one for a while. It’s a new concept, but I still haven’t landed on some things. I’ve learned a lot about patience on this tour. So I’m just going to let myself flow. This is my favorite part of the entire process, just seeing how things develop. Thinking I’d never be able to do something I like again, and then doing it anyway. It’s the best feeling in the world. It’s going to be a good summer, a summer of creation.”

^{Editor's note: Álvaro Díaz's answers have been condensed and translated from Spanish by the author.}