Luar’s Raul Lopez talks about his New York community, leaving Hood By Air, and the power dressing of the women who raised him
Though it may have come as a surprise to Lopez, the win is just the icing on the cake of a breakout year for the designer, who has been enjoying both the explosion of that Ana bag and ecstatic praise for his Spring/Summer 2023 collection. Presented in Manhattan, at the Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed cultural centre The Shed, the oversubscribed, standing-room-only show generated mayhem that led to the closure of the surrounding Hudson Yards streets.
Crime in the area was rampant and the female sex workers Lopez saw on his way to work were among his earliest inspirations. “We weren’t supposed to go down Kent Avenue because of all the prostitutes and crackheads,” Lopez says. “But I used to love it because all the girls looked fabulous, waiting to make a cheque out of the men working at the Domino sugar factories. They wore fringe, big pocketbooks, long jackets with nothing on underneath. The women dressed for the hustle and to provoke men.
Lopez’s hustler mentality led him to create an ironing business in his building. “[It was] $10 a bag and I would do seven bags a day – I would earn $700 a week and I got tips too. Just ironing while I watched TV.” His own designs began to take shape then too: “Taking old JNCO jeans and Hanes tees and sewing things on. It’s why chopping things up is still in my DNA.
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