Luar (Q3220)
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Luar is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Luar |
Luar is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
The spring 2025 Luar show took place outdoors at Rockefeller Plaza. To set the proper mood, the back part of two cars filled withchucherosflanked the runway on either end. Achucherois a box that contains multiple speakers, subwoofers, and other equipment that turn cars into heart-attack inducing sound machines. In the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, this “sport” is known asvoceteo. The proof that they were legit is the amount of editors that jumped out of their seats when the first sounds pumped through the speakers. The music, a melange of techno, booming bass, and maybe even a Nine Inch Nails sample, didn't let up one second during the whole show.Thechucherosmade sense both as a tie to his designer Raul López’s Dominican roots, but also as a modern iteration of punk attitudes. (What's more punk than blasting your music at ungodly volumes to stake a claim for your own self-made culture?) The starting point for this collection was the designer’s life during the late ’90s and early aughts when he was still a teenager trying to square his life at home in Brooklyn with his Dominican family and friends with the world he was encountering when he would venture to the Lower East Side to hang out. “I was all teen angst and trying to figure out who I was, hanging out with the punk girls, the crazy girls, and the art girls downtown but I was still dressing like my family wanted to,” he explained a day before the show at his Wall Street studio. “I needed to have a skinny pant to hang with the girls, but then I could wear a button up to be with my family… my hair could have a nice little bang.” You know, the asymmetric kind we all wore back then. “I was in my punk era, being rebellious.”Although López referenced New York Dolls and CBGB’s and the traditional NYC punk scene that we’re all familiar with, this was not a carbon copy homage with mohawks, studs, and safety pins. “Punk is a feeling, it’s an attitude, it’s how you present yourself out of the norm and stand out and be you,” he said.
11 September 2024
Beyoncé? In Bushwick? In her first public appearance after announcingRenaissance: Act IIat the Super Bowl on Sunday, Beyoncé attended the Luar show tonight alongside her mother and her sister Solange, whose son Julez Smith Jr. walked the show. Did Raul Lopez just win the New York Fashion Week Olympics?Autocorrect editsLuartoliar. The computer will learn in due time, but there is an amusing synchronicity in the fact that Lopez titled this Luar collection Deceptionista. Now what, pray tell, is a deceptionista? The answer starts with another question: Remember the metrosexual?The term was coined in 1994 by Mark Simpson. The metrosexual, Simpson wrote then, was a single young man living in a metropolis in close proximity to the best gyms, shops, and social spaces. He had vast disposable income, and spent it mostly on himself. The metrosexual is a well-manicured man whose sexuality is often immaterial—though he’s presumably heterosexual—who is well groomed, well-mannered, and has good style. For further context, David Beckham was once described as the “biggest metrosexual in Britain.”“They’re back, and it comes in cycles,” said Lopez, pointing at images of Elizabethan and Victorian era men in brocades, makeup, and wigs; men in the late ’70s with tight knits and blow-dried hair; and in the ’90s and aughts in crop tops and with frosted tips. Taped on Lopez’s studio wall were images of Nicholas Hoult as Peter the Great, a portrait of “one of the Tudors,” and snapshots of Brad Pitt, David Beckham, and Matthew McConaughey in the early 2000s. “There are different generations of the metrosexual, and now we are in the era of the stray,” said Lopez with the solemnity of a studied anthropologist. A stray, dear reader, is “a straight gay.”The collection in itself was an anthology of the metrosexual from the perspective of a queer man. “When I was coming up as a gay man,metrosexualwas also a word to mask yourself,” said Lopez. “It was easier to say ‘Oh, he’s not gay, he’s just metro.’” While the word was used derogatorily, it was “easier than being gay.” Thirty years later, the term has somewhat fallen out of style, though, according to Lopez, it hasn’t gone away: “Now we have the manicured men that aren’t necessarily queer baiting, but people say they are,” said the designer.
You know the ones, actors with pearl necklaces and little women’s handbags worn as cross bodies, “the ‘trade’ filming a full ‘beat’ on TikTok” [meaning a hyper-masculine looking man doing a full face of makeup on camera], and “the man wanting to emulate the look of a queer person or that of a chic woman.”
14 February 2024
It’s not surprising that Raúl Lopez’s spring Luar collection was inspired by travel; on Instagram he’s known for his #BRB hashtag, which he usually posts along with a selfie from his plane seat. It’s likewise not surprising that he was inspired not by an exotic locale, but by “El Hoyo” ( “the hole” in Spanish), a humble neighborhood in the Dominican Republic. “It’s a very rural, rough neighborhood, but it’s so beautiful and I enjoy going there,” he said at a preview the day before his show shut down New York Fashion Week.In the car to drop something off at a friend’s house in the DR, he drove into an uncanny scene that would seem strange to anyone not from el Caribe. “On the left side, everyone’s drinking, hanging out, blasting dembow from these loud crazy speakers; and on the right, there’s a church, but the disciples bring the chairs outside, and this woman has set up a podium outside, and she’s preaching with a microphone, like just on the sidewalk.”Standing in the middle of that scene, Lopez had an aha moment. “This song is playing and the guy is screaming ‘Socorro, I’m with God, and I’m with your enemy but I’m dying in a sea of hate and as soon as I’m trying to come out of this water, you’re pulling me back.’ And I feel like [the people in the street] are in this weird vortex, trying to move forward—some to find god or others to get out of the hood—but then they get pulled back.”What’s most surprising is that from this melange came Lopez’s most streamlined and mature collection to date. The butter yellow boxy jacket that opened the show had rows of fully functional rouleau buttons that wrapped around the arms and could be unbuttoned to form a short sleeve jacket. It was worn with a matching pair of shorts that could be unbuttoned to become a panty, and white sheer hose—a mainstay of a certain church look for Caribbean women—and golden sandals.Lopez’s experiments with tailoring were exciting this season. A series of long tailored jackets with wide peak lapels appeared to be worn over draped skirts in the same fabric but were in fact all one piece—a fact that was only obvious as the models walked away and you noticed an elaborately draped back. It hinted at the tension Lopez was exploring—the wanting to move forward but getting pulled back by circumstances or by human temptation.
Further pushing this point were the button-down shirts worn underneath the suit, in classic banker stripes, which featured an extra long collar that stood out against the neck—mirroring the motion of actually being pulled back by the neck.
14 September 2023
There arefashionshows, and there are fashionshows. Luar’s spring collection, shown last night at The Shed, was a fashionshow. Actually no, it was a Fashion Show. Seats set around a square perimeter, with oval full-length vanity mirrors placed throughout the inside immediately piqued interest.The show was scheduled for 9 pm. At 9:52 p.m. there was a shushing—was it about to start? “The program is not actually starting now,” said a voice over an intercom; when it did start, 10 minutes later, to the unmistakable electric guitar of Alejandra Guzmán’s “Llama Por Favor,” the energy in the room shot up to 11. It didn’t matter that we had waited a long time. The anticipation only added to the excitement.The show notes said Raúl Lopez had inspired by family gatherings as a child growing up in a Dominican family in Brooklyn. Sitting on the couch, he would witness his aunts and uncles arrive in nylon jackets which they would take off to reveal their finest underneath. Whatever image that conjured up was no match to the fantasy that arrived on the runway though. The first look: a dress with a round neck and geometrically pieced bodice in shades of khaki, black, and blue nylon (notice the shirred elastic cuffs on the sleeves, taken straight from sporty jacket styles); then the skirt in what looked to be silk in a subtle shade of champagne, shirred at the waist and hips, and decorated with a diamanté diamond shape at the pelvis, before flowing into a bias-cut loose bottom. Throughout, there were diamanté dropped waist dresses, balloon sleeves that sometimes ventured into mutton-sleeve territory, and an emphasis on a strong shoulder — but not the stereotypical 1980s one. This one was taller around the head, rounder around the edges.“The bold shoulder was actually an expression of myself,” Lopez said backstage after the show. “When I was sitting on the sofa [in my parent’s home], you know, you have the uncle with a camcorder, and because I was super-flamboyant, I would tuck myself away,” he motioned, dipping his head below his shoulders, and sinking into an imaginary couch. “I wanted to kind of give ’80s and ’90s with the show, but the [silhouette] was me expressing how I had the weight of the world on my shoulders being just like, a really super-fun, high-pitch, gay boy hiding in the closet.
” This gesture reached its pinnacle in a look on a masc-presenting model that featured a collared white shirt worn under a tan nylon pullover with Luar’s double-Llogo bedazzled at the chest. The pullover’s shoulders hulked around the body, giving the impression that it was swallowing the neck. The matching trouser, worn with a black leather belt, had a kick-pleat inset at the front in a slightly sheerer fabric. Thick gold door-knocker earrings finished the look.
12 September 2022
Trying to speak with Raul Lopez after his phenomenal and electric Luar spring 2022 show was like trying to speak with the President or Cher—it required agility, flexibility, and a willingness to wait. It’s not that Lopez didn’t want to talk about his triumphant return to New York Fashion Week, it was just that he could barely get a word, let alone a breath, in between well-wishes from Lourdes Leon, Kerby Jean-Raymond, and others. I counted over a dozen people who stopped him for a hug in the eight minutes we spoke. Who am I to stand between a beloved designer and his community?Even sitting amongst the Luar lovers was a delight. His show’s Bushwick venue was so packed that a colleague and I shared a folding chair and then a friend, bolting in right before the show started, sat on our laps. (We weren’t the only huddled up group. Ian Isiah brought his puppy.) The closeness of the audience meant that every whoop, every bit of applause, and every gasp was felt not by one person, but by us all, a sensation that gave an already electric return a potent charge.The rager nature of the catwalk belied Lopez’s meditative state. He cashed out of fashion right before the pandemic, casting away to Grand Cayman to decompress. The pressures of the industry were weighing on his mental health and I have to commend him for being a designer to first, know when to pump the brakes, and second, be willing to speak about it publicly.Over the two years he spent off the fashion grid, Lopez recalibrated his ideas about his label. Luar was the pearl, the emotional, beautiful, fragile center of his creative work. His spring 2022 collection was a statement of everything he loves: sweatshorts, sexy suiting, a fluid identity, and his Dominican heritage. The jersey shorts, shirts, and ties looked particularly compelling in a sort of naughty way, as did the pieces held together with a tiny beige leather band across the chest. However tender, the pearl of Luar is still about looking good and feeling hot. Mission accomplished tonight.
12 September 2021
Speaking to designer Raul Lopez after he debuted his latest Luar collection this afternoon, it came as a bit of a surprise to hear him cite as inspiration the Brooklyn girls he used to admire back when he was a preteen hanging out on the block. Sure, the show had the “viciousness” Lopez recalled of those girls, a certain strut that conveyed the attitude “I know who I am, and what I’ve got.” But the clothes on the runway had hinted at another story: This collection, much more streamlined, accessible, and elevated than Luar outings past, was heavily indebted to classic menswear. He was playing with the idea of suiting. There were button-downs and cable knits and pinstripes and glen plaids. For a brand so adamantly anti-binary, it made for a notable change of pace.And then you got it. This is what the end of patriarchy looks like: Fierce fatales of whatever gender making a glorious mess of the old male power structure codes. Trying them on, making them their own. It made for some truly eye-catching looks, like the tennis-skirt-trouser hybrids in plaid, with tiers of rigid pleats down one leg, or a trenchcoat covered in a film of glossy black mesh, or a “suit” comprised of a deconstructed pinstripe jacket and matching leg-warmer-y things with long flags of fabric attached at the calf. Many of the looks here were retail-friendly, in particular the patchwork fur, the handkerchief-hem skirts, and zip-detailed pants, and lots of people will be clamoring for the Luar belt-handled satchels, with clear plastic bags just the right size to hold a set of keys and a phone. But some ensembles did make you wonder: Must all the revolutions happen at once? Might not a dress, for example, still cover an ass? That’s a niggling complaint, given that Lopez made a huge leap here, in terms of thinking through the practicality of his clothes. This season, he made you believe he knows what he’s got, and who he is.
13 February 2019
Luar designer Raul Lopez had a couple different ways of talking about his new collection. Speaking after his show this afternoon, Lopez said his guiding idea was to take clothes that were “kind of basic” and infuse them with elements of medieval and Renaissance-era dress, like bodices and diaphanous whorls of fabric. “I call it thethotaissance,” Lopez remarked. Another idea, related to the first, was Dante’sThe Divine Comedyand the concept of purgatory. As Lopez explained, his mostly white collection was playing with notions of purification, as of souls cleansing themselves in pursuit of a leveling up to heaven or some other kind of transcendent realm. Raver mysticism might be another way of depicting what Lopez was up to, given that the models on his catwalk, clad in their artfully deconstructed, immaculately tailored garments, seemed to be making their way to that other, transcendent realm via the dance floor.The idea of purgatory was apt, though, in another way. Lopez, a self-taught designer, is emphatically in the limbo of “emerging” mode. He is absolutely brimming with good ideas, and unlike a lot of young designers who toy with deconstruction, he brings a seriousness of intent to his work that’s reflected in the immaculate make of his clothes. This collection—larger than the two previous he’s shown on the runway—was impressive in lots of ways, and most especially in its quieter experiments, like the sinuous, satiny blazers with zippered openings in the back, or the fitted trousers that opened at the ankle. Lopez has a nice touch with fabric, too, demonstrated in the contrast developed between the geometry of pleats and the fluidity of the material’s draping. There was a nice industrial frisson to the silver fabric he used in an armor-like bodysuit, and the sheer, crocodile-embossed vinyl deployed to great effect in jackets and coats.To be completely boring about it, however, for Lopez to level up as a designer—and Luar’s short-listing for the CFDA/VogueFashion Fund puts him in position to do just that—he needs to put a bit more energy into developing those quieter ideas and dedicate a bit less of his fashion show real estate to clothes that read as flights of pure fancy. His ability to do so is quite plain—and, frankly, really working through the fanciful ideas, and making them stand out against a backdrop of garments that are, well, a touch more “basic,” would elevate the editorial pieces and give them more impact.
It’s obvious that Lopez is having fun with his clothes, and by no means should he dispense with being playful. But being selective about which of his copious ideas to pursue, i.e., being more decisive and emphatic about his proportions and silhouettes and embellishments, will give his talent more room to shine.
12 September 2018
A full song played before any models hit the runway at Luar on Wednesday afternoon. It was odd and exhilarating, like the fashion version ofWaiting for Godot. Frankly, Raul Lopez could’ve shown us nothing at all or something that we’d never expect (last season, he turned a pair of khaki trousers into a skirt with a “bulge” at the front). He’s the kind of young designer that works in his own weird universe, known mostly for making abstract, deconstructed clothes for the raver kids he grew up with. Many of these friends were at the show—his first in a proper runway setting. The music got heavy and the bass, bass-ier as his opening look came out from around a dark corner, and it became clear that this underground creative was evolving, expanding, and dare we say, taking his label a little more seriously.Sure, there were some incredibly imaginative and totally unwearable pieces, like the sheer sculpture of a suit encapsulating one model’s body or the giant fur-trimmed pirate hat paraded by another. But with that hat came a beautifully tailored long trench embellished with the words “Queens New York” in crystals on the back. Tailoring is Lopez’s bread and butter if we’re talking about sell-ability—his suits and outerwear are as strong as those of any seasoned designer. On Wednesday, he struck a smart balance between that commercially viable look and a loud cool factor. He put his crystalized logo on slick bomber jackets and added zippers to nicely fitted raver pants. Lopez upped the sophistication level while remaining true to his own quirk and that makes him an exciting talents to watch, even if it’s still very early in his career.
8 February 2018
Raul Lopez wants to make the ladies feel like bosses. His first full women’s ready-to-wear collection for Spring 2018 only came with 18 looks, but there was certainly enough to prove that, with a bit more streamlining, this is a market in which he might really thrive. The young designer currently operates within the creatively driven underground realm of fashion. His designs—for both men and women—are delightfully humorous and avant-garde, but look closely. Once picked apart, certain pieces could fly off the shelves at somewhere like, say, Opening Ceremony or Maryam Nassir Zadeh. With his debut this season, he was smart to carry over his cheeky, deconstructed office-wear vibes from his main men’s offering. As he explained it, he “was focused on the type of woman who is in touch with her hypermasculine side, one on a power trip and one who is looking for revenge on any man that has ever tried to make her feel ashamed.” He adds, “She is complex—she loves a night out on Dyckman Street [in New York’s Inwood area], but also lives for an elegant and classy moment.”This is where Lopez could find balance, somewhere between the style of the wild club-kid posse he has long been a part of and the strong femininity and ladylike aesthetic he’s clearly drawn to. Certain pieces in the new collection were well conceived under the pretense of this dichotomy. There was the camel-colored overcoat that was cinched at the waist and elbows and embroidered with the Wu-Tang Clan’s lyrics, “Cash rules everything around me.” There were cool, sophisticated cuffed jeans and a dark denim skirt with gold buttons layered over them. A gray long blazer embellished with oblong metal hardware at the shoulder and hip was also strong. Like he did with his men’s collection shown earlier this summer, Lopez also played with ideas of suiting—two standouts included a crisp white button-down shirt stitched with “Luar” in cursive and a striking, shapeless dress made from pinstripe jackets and trousers that hung beautifully off of a model’s shoulders. It would also be a shame not to mention the skirt designed with khaki trousers that seemed to insinuate a dude’s “bulge” at the front.Lopez has incredible potential and, if he can strike the right chord with women who want that business-in-the-front, party-in-the-back kind of style (on top of the DJs, rappers, hip-hop stars, vogue-ers, and artists he’s already won over), he’ll have it made in the shade.
As he noted after the show, “Every aspect of my life has been influenced by strong and controversial women and paying homage to them was long overdue.”
14 September 2017