Next week, Raul Lopez — the New York City-based designer behind Luar — will strap into an airplane seat bound for Paris.
“I want to sell. I want to be global. I want to make a world where everyone comes to Luar and it feels good. I want to grow this to a place where kids are lining up and want to hang out and buy clothes. Like AOL chat rooms — you know, everyone is in there and doesn’t know each other and becomes friends. I want it to be the YMCA ofLast month, he launched the brand’s first commercial ready-to-wear collection, with most pieces priced under $250.
“I think for me, it was trying to figure out how to align myself with these bigger brands and not seem so emerging. I have been emerging for like 10 years — so it’s about trying to get established,” Lopez said of his change in approach.observer, and his brand is an amalgamation of 35 years of looking in on every echelon of New York City society.
They are stylized updates to what can be a typical New York uniform — one he is striving to preserve, particularly as the city bends to the desires of extreme affluence. That project came a year after he departed Hood by Air, which he cofounded with Shayne Oliver and left just before the brand took off. Even that did not sour Lopez’s desire to create fashion, even in the midst of relentless financial struggle. All the while he had the big personality and taste level required to make it in fashion — something money cannot buy.
In Camp David’s basement, Lopez has — without approval — moved in drafting tables, a Juki industrial sewing machine while a rack of Ana bags, clothing samples and fur coats hangs in the open. “No one comes down here, we take over this space,” he said. “I have come from the trenches, I could work anywhere.” On July 1, however, he will move his team to Luar’s first official office space in Manhattan’s Financial District.
Luar is a reflection of moments ranging from family gatherings in pre-gentrification Brooklyn, after-school outings in luxury department stores, the indie sleaze downtown era when most weekends you could find Lopez beside a speaker at places like Home Sweet Home, to fashion awards and philanthropic galas.
Sitting on a couch at Camp David, Lopez pulls up the Class of Palm Beach TikTok account that chronicles the outfits women wear while shopping on Worth Avenue. He talks about the fake Hermès and Chanel handbags wealthy women wear out in the daytime, while keeping the real versions safely tucked away in their closets. He’s obsessed with the Upper East Side and the subculture of philanthropy as a rich person’s hobby.
“I have an obsession with becoming the American designer that uses their platform to help other people. It takes someone becoming like a Ralph Lauren to be able to do that. I know that’s my duty and I have to do it. I don’t know why I’m so crazed with this whole thing of giving back. It sounds corny but I don’t even care, I just want to do it. I am a contender now, it’s a real business.”
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