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Two days before Luar’s Autumn/Winter 2024 show, designer Raul Lopez is knee-deep in prep at his studio in WSA, a creative hub in downtown New York (also home to Bode). He strides over to a chocolate brown leather panelled dress draped on a mannequin. “It needs to be more natural,” he tells the team, making adjustments. Models are due to arrive at 9pm for fittings.
“We’ll probably be done around 4 or 5am the next two nights,” Lopez says, adding that he may well sleep in the studio — all in the name of Tuesday’s show.
When the show comes around, it is held in 154 Scott, a warehouse venue in Bushwick, Brooklyn, just down the road from Lopez held last season’s show. This season, Luar was scheduled for the penultimate night of New York Fashion Week. (Thom Browne is closing out the Wednesday a little earlier, at 5pm.) But this didn’t mean Tuesday was a quiet affair. Press and buyers showed up in droves — as did the stars. Ahead of the show, whispers swirled that Beyoncé was at the venue after showgoers saw a cowboy hat and sparkle-clad woman exit an SUV. Sure enough, the superstar sat front row, as did Tina Knowles and Solange, whose son Julez walked in the show.
By the sounds of Tuesday night’s front row cheers – from the Knowles family to Paloma Elsesser – the all-nighters were worth it.
As usual, the production has involved several of Lopez’s friends. Rich Aybar — who Lopez has known for 15 years — designed furniture made from rubber and silicone for the show’s set. Lopez takes us next door to Aybar’s studio, into a dimly lit, warm-hued room filled with orangey, rubbery furniture scattered across the runway, which looked like a lightbox thanks to polycarbonate walls and lit-up columns.
Another friend — Aaron David Ross, or ADR, whose ‘Deceptionista’ track was one of Lopez’s inspirations this season (and the collection’s name) — did the music. “It’s very different from what I usually do. Very experimental,” Lopez says.
Lopez takes his shows very seriously. “I like to build an immersive experience where if you go to my show, you’re getting a ‘show’,” he says, now sitting in his office above the studio, while his team finishes up below. “I love that whatever you thought about the show, at least you walk away with some type of energy. That’s important: giving people something to talk about.”
And talk they do. Last season, British Vogue’s Chioma Nnadi wrote that a colleague likened the energy at the Luar show to that of early McQueen: “He wasn’t wrong,” mused Nnadi.
The Luar show is one that people hang around for. Last September, international editors and buyers scheduled their flights for the next morning to avoid missing the brand’s closing 9pm slot. In seasons past, the doors got hectic. Supposedly, a woman leaked the invite for the SS23 show on TikTok and it wound up on NYU message boards. “We were bombarded by 800 people and it created chaos. You could literally crowd-surf outside,” Lopez recalls in between puffs of his Peach Mango vape (they have a better system now).
Inspiration from bygone eras
Lopez may subscribe to the fantasy of the fashion show, yet his design process is anything but old school. He drapes; then sketches; then patterns. “That came from necessity because I couldn’t go to fashion school,” he says. So he cut things up and draped them on mannequins and friends — and stuck with it because it worked.
The autumn/winter collection was no exception. “Deceptionista” is an exploration of metrosexuality. In the past, Lopez would say he was metrosexual to be able to be flamboyant and chic — but pass as straight. “Everything kind of derives from that, where it was like a keyword to help queer boys to be able to cop out and say they weren’t gay and use it as a form of security. Some type of protection from people scrutinising and picking on them, which is what I did.”
Lopez took inspiration from the flamboyance of dressing during different eras, from Rococo to Elizabethan. At the studio, he pulls up images of Elizabethan-era clothing on his phone (“sorry, I talk in visuals”), the shapes of which are not unlike Lopez’s triangle-sleeved, cinched-waist jackets. The studio walls are covered in what he calls a “hodgepodge” of images of Elizabethan men alongside modern-day celebrities: a sunglasses-clad David Beckham alongside Matthew McConaughey in a wrap skirt and flip flops on a red carpet in the ’90s. “Metrosexual is back,” Lopez says.
Two days before the show, some of the collage remains. Other bits of paper are crumpled on the floor. “This is how I work,” Lopez says. “It wraps all around and goes from the different eras into now. It’s like taking little elements from all the eras and mixing them up to get the collection.”
The finished designs feature “chain of office” pieces atop the looks. The livery collars are, upon closer examination, watches: a collaboration with American watch brand Breda. Lopez is also debuting collaboration pieces with Canadian outerwear brand Moose Knuckles, including fluffy Ana bags. Lopez is choosy about his collabs. “You can get money from any sponsor,” he says, “[But] if it doesn’t feel organic, I’d rather not do it.” Alongside the collabs, the runway also featured Luar’s new basics line, a selection of staples that will retail for under $500.
Alongside the Elizabethan-inspired pieces, Luar’s signature sunglasses that Lopez debuted last season — but haven’t yet hit shelves — are back. This season, they’re double shaded; a riff on grandpas wearing sunnies on top of reading glasses. Lopez puts them on: “Coming to a store near you,” he winks. The plan is to release them in May or June, when Luar also debuts its swimwear. “Trying to get them all,” Lopez says of the new categories. “It’s trying to grow up. Be a real brand.”
Building a community
Lopez would go even bigger on the show concept if he could. “I wish I had a tonne of money because then I could really go crazy,” he says. “It’s on a budget.” What that budget was, Lopez declines to share.
How does he do it? “By the grace of god,” he says, shaking his head. In reality, it’s by the grace of Lopez: over 10 years of hustling and brand building, the designer has knitted together a strong network of friends in the industry, and has the business savvy to boot. “I came from scraping to get to the top with a $10,000 budget and putting on a show, back in the day,” he says. “I know how to work with what I have. I’m blessed to have a lot of friends in a lot of fields who are down to help me. I’ve created this community of people where we all champion each other.”
Lopez’s longtime collaborator, members club and creative community SAA and the 154 Scott team, for instance, are the ones behind the lightbox project; the installation will stay open post-show. “I’m activating there for fashion week,” Lopez explains — meaning Luar saved on venue (and production) costs. “So it worked in my favour, you see.”
For Lopez, everything comes back to community. “I’m the YMCA of American Luxury,” he quips. He’ll welcome people into the studio (“everyone just pops in”) and let young stylists pull (“a lot of them are now working with huge celebrities or in all these big publications”). As long as there’s mutual respect, Lopez is good.
This community approach extends to his casting. “I like to build families: the Dimes Square trade who skates and the girls that might hang out with them. The art kid and the queer kids — really embodying New York, which is so crucial when I’m doing casting. It needs to feel organic and true to myself and the collection because I’m just sharing a story and they are a piece of the story.” Some regulars, some guests — he likens it to Thanksgiving.
Lopez has always been one to champion marginalised groups and “people who identify as whatever and whoever”, he says. But it’s not about optics, nor even about giving his models a voice, he says. He casts who he likes and knows. “That’s just who I am.”
Part of the reason Luar’s shows are so buzzy is because the designer lets people in. “I give people access. You were there once too, girl — know what I mean?” Attendees are keen to support because they’ve been along for the ride. “Everyone just pops in, literally saying ‘what’s up’,” he says. “I love that.”
Lopez does his best to help out fellow designers. He’s fielded calls from at least two up and comers in the last couple of weeks. “They’re calling me and asking me for help and I’m like, ‘OK, whatever I can do, I’ll send this person over to you’,” he says. He’s keen to lend a hand in a way that might’ve meant he didn’t have to do the 10 years of struggling to get his brand to where it is today. “There’s space for everyone. The world is so fucking big.”
The world is big, but Lopez is squarely focused on New York. “I’m on this weird path of — not saying I’m the one who’s gonna do it — but I want to be one of the ones to try to stay put and bring American luxury back to what it was,” he says. “In that era where it was like the Battle of Versailles: there were so many greats of America, and greats of Europe, everybody got along and they did the whole thing and that was so cool.” (Though he’s not saying he’d never show elsewhere: “I don’t like to speak into the future,” he says. “I’m very superstitious.)
For now, the focus is the Brooklyn show, with model fittings and garment finishing touches down to the wire. On Sunday evening, the team hoped to take a break and get takeout for Usher’s Super Bowl halftime performance. “It’s been a tradition for the last couple of years,” Lopez says.
The next day, back at the studio, he says there wasn’t time for a halftime show break. “How was it?” he asks. I tell him I only caught a glimpse through attendees’ phone screens at Ludovic de Saint Sernin’s New York debut the night before. Lopez laughs: “I slept here,” he says.
An American superbrand doesn’t build itself.
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