Giovanni Giannoni/WWD
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter!? No need to adjust your screen, that was Beyoncé along with Solange and Tina Knowles front row at Luar, lighting up Brooklyn. Fresh off unveiling “Renaissance Act II” at Sunday’s Super Bowl, Beyoncé showed up to Raul Lopez’ fall runway on auntie duty, taking in the collection and watching Solange’s son Daniel “Julez” Smith Jr. walk the runway. If you are one to keep score on celebrity sightings at NYFW, Lopez has cleared the board, winning the week with the pandemonium — and social media firestorm — that broke out upon her arrival.
Now on to the runway: Do you remember the metrosexual? It was the American Dialect Society’s word of the year in 2003, with roots in the ’90s. Merriam Webster defined it as a usually urban heterosexual male given to enhancing his personal appearance by fastidious grooming, beauty treatments, and fashionable clothes. “The metrosexual is back,” Lopez said firmly at a preview of his collection. He deemed fall his “Deceptionista” collection and the metro man — well, in 2024 it’s a “stray,” he said. “A stray gay, they do everything with the girls but they won’t sleep with” them, a theme, he explained, that goes back, way back, pointing to an image of a man in a powdered wig looking in the mirror during the Rococo period.
His taste for unabashed flash was laid bare with a new crop of bolder shoulder garments — for example, the double-breasted black leather coat over a white monochromatic tie and shirt combo, new ostrich-like Ana backpack and wide-leg leather pants that Julez stomped down the runway in, followed by a mixed media cardigan over leather pants look on a female model, both giving an excitingly cool fashion Frankenstein vibe — canon Luar at this point. An unexpected burgundy top that mimicked a scarf tied sideways was a very modern idea on a DIY scarf top. A host of supple knit dresses and tops with edge followed. In fact, Lopez has taken his fabric game to new heights with Mongolian lamb shawls and lambskin puffer jackets in his distinctive oversized T sculpture shape, debuting a multiseason collaboration with lifestyle brand Moose Knuckles.
Understanding his business, he used the collection to introduce Luar basics, a range of core styles that he will update each season, his spin on his customer’s wardrobe needs. Think leggings and T-shirts but done the Luar way. “It’s going to be huge,” he said point-blank. And the Ana handbag, a social media star in its own right, came in a mix of new shapes and colors and was reimagined as the backpack.
It was his strongest collection yet. Lopez creates a fantasy, but is forever firmly planted in the Brooklyn he grew up in. And NYFW is all the better for it — just ask Beyoncé.
For more New York Fashion Week reviews, click here.
