Designer Raul Lopez Talks About His Dominican Heritage Influence on Luar

The Luar brand has become the intersection of high fashion and street style — known for breaking norms and creating a new wave and style for its customers. Founded by Raul Lopez, a brainchild of the avant-garde streetwear label, HBA (Hood by Air), alongside Shayne Oliver — a brand that quickly became a cult favorite for its innovative and boundary-pushing designs.

Lopez launched Luar in 2011, and since its inception the New York native has become a new icon for a generation of fashion enthusiasts aspiring to enter the industry and follow in his footsteps. As a third- generation designer, he hails from a self-taught atmosphere, following the same footsteps as his grandmother and mother. Lopez also aims to bridge the gap within his community by paying it forward and building a design team of mostly Latino, POC and queer talents, and giving back to those who have built him up, such as trans housing organizations — celebrating the immigrant experience.

The Luar brand continues to explore themes of identity, culture and the intersection of high fashion and streetwear. Through Luar, Lopez has been praised for his craftsmanship and for challenging traditional fashion norms, often drawing inspiration from his Dominican heritage, with his work being characterized by a focus on tailoring, innovative use of materials, the exploration of unusual silhouettes both in his ready-to-wear and accessories offering.

“A lot of the aspects from my childhood to now have so much to do with my Dominican heritage and being Latino, being from New York, but really heavy on my latinidad and being from the diaspora, and really living and breathing being Dominican,” Lopez said.

Following a three-season hiatus in 2020, Lopez’s return to fashion in 2021 wasn’t quiet and quickly caught the eyes of critics and celebrities alike with his spring 2022 ready-to-wear collection, which debuted at New York Fashion Week that year. To add to the fanfare, his small, structured, retro-style Ana bag was seen on the arms of celebrities including Madonna, Beyoncé, Dua Lipa, Troye Sivan and Charli XCX.

The designer has amassed an array of industry accolades in a short period of time, beginning in 2018, Lopez was a finalist for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, and in 2022, he won the CFDA’s Accessory Designer of the Year award and was recognized as an emerging leader shaping the future of fashion on Time magazine’s “100 Next” list of the year’s top influencers. In 2023, Lopez was named a LVMH Prize semifinalist.

Lopez’s designs have been anointed as groundbreaking because it’s a brand by and for underrepresented, historically oppressed people, specifically, the queer Latine population in Brooklyn, and his accepted success lies mainly within the strong bonds and notions he permeates of strong family values and his bluntness.

“I’ve been saying, I’m doing a Dominican case study, and I’m in my 13th year. It’s like, why do we behave like this? Why do we act like this? Why do we dress like this? Why do they eat this? It’s a lot of different components, which was kind of what my parents did to me, but on another level, but I’m still educating myself,” the designer said.

“I have this ritual where I go before my show, to the Dominican Republic before I start designing, and I stay there for like, two to three weeks, and then the idea comes to me, which I don’t know, it’s weird. It’s become a pattern that I have for years now where I have to go back and immerse myself in it and for some strange reason, and I’m very superstitious, very Latino, it just comes to me, and that’s when the process starts for the show, the music, the vibe, design language, or something that has happened to me in past, present or future,” Lopez added.

“I always said this, I’m too ghetto for fashion, and too fashion for the ghetto, I never really fit in. And I know it’s because the way I dress, the way I carry myself, the way I look, the tattoos, the earrings, the jewelry, the whole thing, and I’m very Dominican about it, and I know that has a lot to do with it. I have the sharp haircut with the fade and I fit the prototype of what they don’t like,” Lopez said.

Lopez also collaborated with Ron Zacapa, the esteemed Guatemalan aged rum spirits brand, resulting in a limited-edition collection that merged the worlds of rum and couture and most notably as well in 2023, the Latin American Fashion Summit presented Lopez with the “Visionary of the Year” award.

The philosophy behind the Luar brand lies in the intersection of New York City and Dominican Republic, promoting the constant curiosity of “tomorrow,” yet his influence continues to extend beyond design, as he’s also been widely recognized for his role in shaping the conversation around inclusivity and diversity within the fashion industry.

Lopez has also been referenced as an industry disruptor, making clothes so otherworldly they challenged existing luxury fashion houses to start chasing the future, but the future is here, and Lopez is not shying away from his vision.

“I think for us, it is more our design language. It’s different from other Hispanic brands. We are not the prototype of our parents era of the big ballgowns and the focus on tailored looks. I mean I love tailoring, but in my way, and I think the reason why I’ve stuck out is because I do my culture in my way, and I speak it in a different language,” Lopez said.

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, WWD chose 10 Latino designers who are shaping the world of fashion today to photograph and profile. The images from this series will be featured in a national billboard campaign run by Outfront.