Luar closed New York Fashion Week with a much-needed bang. Raul Lopez named his autumn-winter 2025 collection “Pato“. In Spanish, pato means duck, as in the bird, but in some parts of Latin America, such as Puerto Rico, it’s a homophobic slur. “I wanted to reclaim that word,” said Lopez. “Especially right now – I’m not going back in the closet for no one.” That powerful bravado was conveyed in a collection that was a powerful, dynamic homage to all the fashion patos that shaped Lopez’s imagination as a kid: think John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix. You could also sense Claude Montana’s influence. Major 1980s energy was all over these big shoulders, attitude-giving tailoring and extravagant feather brooches. A plastic, tape-like texture was a recurring motif. “It’s all hodgepodge,” Lopez explained. “The gay boy who’s at home playing with his mom’s jewelry, wrapping a towel around his head to pretend it’s hair, wants to wear a thigh high boot but just wraps a bunch of duct tape around his legs.” This week, fashion in New York had no voice. Until Lopez arrived with his vivacious outing.
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Luar is New York Fashion Week’s lifebelt. Just like Marc Jacobs did until 2020, now its Raul López who’s closing the week, and he does it with powerful bravado and vivacious attitude. His spring-summer 2025 fashion show – taking place outdoors at Rockefeller Plaza – was a brilliant finale moment after days of rather dull, plain-looking fashion shows and collections that said nothing. The designer had named the collection “En Boca Quedó,” a Dominican saying usually used when leaving a conversation that means “I’m leaving, but now you’ll speak of me“. “It can be a form of shade, but also very loving, in a funny haha shade way,” Raul explained. The dramatic silhouettes that walked the evening runway definitely voiced the “en boca quedó” spirit: taffeta pieces cut to hulking proportions that served as a kind of armor while completely revealing the body underneath; sumptuous, oversized leather jacket-dress with oversized curved sleeves and in leopard printed pony-hair; and the voluminous ball-like trench-coat that was a beautiful middle finger to the “quiet luxury” cliché. Madonna who sat in the front row loves Luar. You should love it, too.
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Raul Lopez’ Luar shows have become highlights, just as Marc Jacobs’ or Raf Simons’ Calvin Klein shows were back in New York Fashion Week’s history. Autumn-winter 2024 is one of those definitely, not only because Beyoncé was in attendance. This collection was a witty play around the clichéd term “metrosexual” (the last time I’ve heard it in a serious conversion was in 2012, and I live in Poland where such topics always arrive delayed). According to a dictionary definition, he’s a “single young man living in a metropolis in close proximity to the best gyms, shops, and social spaces, with a vast disposable income spent mostly on himself”. A 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”.
“They’re back, and it comes in cycles,” said Lopez, pointing at images of Elizabethan and Victorian era men in brocades, makeup, and wigs, as well as men in the late ’70s with tight knits and blow-dried hair. “There are different generations of the metrosexual, and now we are in the era of the stray (straight gay),” the designer concluded. The collection in itself was an anthology of the metrosexual from the perspective of a queer man. This season, Luar clothes can be really flamboyant, but can also turn very masc at the same time. This dichotomy was on display on the runway as Lopez offered opulent zebra devoré prints in shirting (a riff on Tom Ford, an iconic metrosexual), glossy leather tailoring in the designer’s signature hefty proportions, and his recurrent hulking shoulder treatment on everything from cardigans to denim jackets. There were tight jeans paired with tighter tees (the uniform of the Dominican metrosexual, he said) that highlighted the models’ builds. A run of extra large jackets with the aforementioned bold shoulders and rounded sleeves, Lopez’s play on Elizabethan male attire, dwindled the body. The one-two punch provided by the Luar designer was the combination of a knockout collection paired with thought-provoking hypotheses about our culture. Forget the “strays,” metros, queers, straights, and everything in between. This fashion week, he christened the “Luarsexual,” and by asking the right questions about American culture and welcoming one of its biggest icons into his space, Lopez himself cemented his place as a key figure in American fashion today.
Here are couple of Luar classics you can shop right now!
For a couple of seasons now, Luar is the finale New York Fashion Week show. It’s a good ending, one that leaves an impression of hope for the city’s contemporary fashion. This was Raul 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. This opening look conveyed the rhythm of this collection, which was mostly about experiments with tailoring . 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. Other standouts included the separates made from “crackle vinyl,” meant to mimic the cement floors that are typical in the houses in the Dominican Republic neighborhood where Luar had its show. It looked particularly glamorous on a shirt with that same rouleau button detail along the sleeve and the bodice, tucked into a high-waist mermaid skirt in a shade of warm cement gray, and a little subversive on a shirt in a cooler shade of gray tucked into a pleated skort and worn with a long white tie. “I think this season I was more refined with the hand embroideries, the fabrics, the suiting, the crepes… I just feel like I’m evolving into my true self,” Lopez said. “This marks the 10th year that I do an actual runway show, and I was thinking how all this hustling and bustling really paid off, because it’s such a beautiful thing to be a New Yorker and be recognized in the city. And it kind of sets the tone of having to show out when I do a show.” He paused for a second, “but who knows what next season will bring? Maybe I’ll go back to being crazy.”
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On the last day of New York Fashion Week, Luar presented one of the best very collections the city had in offer this season. Commotion descended onto the streets of Brooklyn as editors were forced to jostle with members of the public in order to get an eye on whatever Raul Lopez was about to showcase. But that’s precisely the level of demand that the designer triggers with his fashion moments. This is because he brings something actually new to the table, rolling back the film on his upbringing and transforming those memories into luxurious, refined designs. The first glimpse of the autumn-winter 2023 collection came via Instagram, where the designer shared a photo of an ornate sofa covered in the same plastic wrap used by Latin American households to keep their furniture fresh. It was embroidered with the words “calle pero elegante” (meaning“street but elegant”), which is the quintessence for Lopez’s approach to design. On the runway, a diverse and beautiful mixture of street cast and professional models emerged from a mirrored maze carrying supersized iterations of Luar’s signature Top Handle handbag, dressed in marvelous sculptured coat-dresses with flecks of feathery antennae sprouting from hair. Hulking shirts lurched from their shoulders and leather windbreakers had been cinched in at the waist with diamante-studded belts. Sweaters, bomber jackets, and ball gowns were treated as one and the same; cut into video vixen cocoons with cloaking hoods and tapered waists. The menswear doubled down on that bold, triangular silhouette, with blown-up shoulders on denim jackets and pinstriped blazers giving way to spliced skirts and wide-legged jeans. That’s the energy I missed in most of the New York shows. Luar saved the week with ferocious grace.
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Design & Culture by Ed 