Next week, Raul Lopez — the Latest York City-based designer behind Luar — will strap into an airplane seat certain for Paris. He’s a finalist for the LVMH Prize — the most recent stop on a road to what could make him the U.S.’ latest egalitarian lifestyle brand, following within the footsteps of Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Tory Burch.

Lopez, like those aforementioned who got here before him, has a specific knack for offering luxury at a price point that feels inside grasp.

Ralph Lauren, the son of Jewish, eastern European immigrants and a first-generation Latest Yorker, took the WASP-y dress code to the masses. Lopez, also a primary generation Latest Yorker, is following suit along with his own viewpoint — one which interprets codes from wealthy, white America through the lens of working class Brooklyn and its Dominican community — making it feel particularly vital on this cultural moment.

“I need to sell. I need to be global. I need to make a world where everyone involves Luar and it feels good. I need to grow this to a spot where kids are lining up and need to hang around and buy clothes. Like AOL chat rooms — you realize, everyone seems to be in there and doesn’t know one another and becomes friends. I need it to be the YMCA of fashion — the Boys and Girls Club. So everyone has a spot to come back,” the designer said of his ambitions.

Last month, he launched the brand’s first business ready-to-wear collection, with most pieces priced under $250.

This follows the 2021 relaunch of his collection, which included the “Ana” bag, a granny purse hybridized with a Wall Streeter’s briefcase, all shrunken all the way down to itty-bitty TikTok proportions. The style helped propel Lopez further after a decade of futile attempts at high fashion under his own name.

The Ana, which has been offered in pony hair, iridescent and embossed ostrich finishes, has sold within the “hundreds,” in keeping with Lopez. It’s been within the window of Bergdorf Goodman and, this past December, was within the clutches of dozens of partygoers at any given Art Basel Miami Beach event. It also won him the CFDA Award for Accessory Designer of the Yr.

On a recent afternoon, Lopez is at his office in Industry City area of Brooklyn, Latest York — rummaging through a plastic Cartier backstock case that he uses to move his personal jewelry collection around the town. “I take it with me most days,” he said. Inside are vintage Nina Ricci gold clip-on earrings, a bejeweled costume watch, and a multifinger ring that spells out Luar.

His office — a 3 desk-wide cubicle within the co-working space Camp David — is filled with garment racks and purses, storing your entire contents of his brand archives because it returned with a more business bent.

Lopez rode out the pandemic in Cayman Islands, where he worked as a creative consultant for the favored resort Palm Heights. He also visited family within the Dominican Republic, where he noticed women’s attachment to Michael Kors accessories — their ballet flats with little MK charms and purses maintained with the care of a Birkin — and decided to get more in step with that branding mentality.

“I feel for me, it was attempting to work out the way to align myself with these larger brands and never seem so emerging. I actually have been emerging for like 10 years — so it’s about attempting to get established,” Lopez said of his change in approach.

The designer is a keen observer, and his brand is an amalgamation of 35 years of looking in on every echelon of Latest York City society.

It’s almost as if you happen to can feel the town through Luar’s runway collections and, now, his wider business designs. Latest York’s fashion industry has at all times focused on Manhattan — although the island only accounts for 1.6 million of the town’s 8.5 million-plus population. Lopez is searching through a wider lens, offering a loudspeaker for the outer borough experience — giving more Latest Yorkers than not a slice of fashion that they will discover with. “It’s my twist on Americana,” he said.

In Luar’s latest drop, there are white cotton tank tops with a bejeweled “L” ($90), styled with distressed mid-rise jeans ($260) and his version of a swishy jogging pant, which flare from the middle with pleats ($290). There are logo sweatshirts with a silhouette pulled from ’50s football teams ($172), half-zip technical pullovers ($158) and track jackets that resemble late ’90s ski jackets ($420).

They’re stylized updates to what generally is a typical Latest York uniform — one he’s striving to preserve, particularly as the town bends to the desires of maximum affluence.

In February, Lopez closed Latest York Fashion Week in a slot long reserved for Marc Jacobs. The autumn collection, called “Calle pero Elegante,” was a heightened version of the business designs that Luar recently released on its site. It was an ode to what Lopez called the Latest York “gangstresses” of the late ’90s, with their fur coats and diamonds illustrating a certain tension between latest and old money codes.

The gathering grew Luar’s business and was picked up by 25 retailers, including Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue and Trame. Compared with spring 2023, the corporate says its wholesale revenue increased 60 percent.

Like many designers of color, Lopez feels that his margin for error is incredibly small. And so the designer, who feels in some ways tortured to present clothes crafted at a high level, spends weeks on the road overseeing production and quality control in Portugal.

Lopez is presented, and in some ways cursed, with a deep drive to supply fashion at any cost. He has no formal design training, didn’t attend college, and from 2011 to 2017 produced a brand called Luar Zepol (his name spelled backward) with 30 or so full runway looks each season — all the way down to the shoes — by surviving off unemployment checks.

That project got here a yr after he departed Hood by Air, which he cofounded with Shayne Oliver and left just before the brand took off. Even that didn’t sour Lopez’s desire to create fashion, even within the midst of relentless financial struggle. All of the while he had the massive personality and taste level required to make it in fashion — something money cannot buy.

Fast-forward a decade-plus and the designer is finally making some money while maintaining an identical level of resourcefulness and grit. Lopez still lives in the identical rent-stabilized apartment constructing that he grew up in — sharing the Williamsburg, Brooklyn space with a roommate.

“I actually have a mission and I do know what it’s. I’m not interested by living lavishly — I’ve seen and been in the very best places while living in that apartment,” he said.

At Camp David, it’s an identical situation. Lopez and his team work out of an elongated cubicle, dodging tech bros and a general smell of cold brew coffee. It’s not a great place for a creative to work, but there’s a way to the madness. The indisputable fact that Luar’s neighbors have no real interest in the brand means one thing — reasonably priced rent and a minimal likelihood someone will steal their samples.

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 within the open. “Nobody comes down here, we take over this space,” he said. “I actually have come from the trenches, I could work anywhere.” On July 1, nonetheless, he’ll move his team to Luar’s first official office space in Manhattan’s Financial District.

The brand employs a small team of about six full-time employees together with a roster of consultants who’re a part of Lopez’s wider creative community.

“I feel for me [having a brand] has been a type of struggle and survival. I come from an era where I needed to fight to create space for myself. It teaches you survival skills. I saw my dad construct his own construction company after working at a fruit stand and a car parking zone for years. He built himself from nothing,” said the designer.

Lopez’s plastic Cartier box may very well be taken a metaphor his work as a complete. It errs on fancy, but is grounded in aspiration and utility.

Luar is a mirrored image of moments starting from family gatherings in pre-gentrification Brooklyn, after-school outings in luxury malls, the indie sleaze downtown era when most weekends you can find Lopez beside a speaker at places like Home Sweet Home, to fashion awards and philanthropic galas.

For Lopez, that alchemy can manifest in peculiar ways. It’s why, when he stayed in a penthouse at The Carlyle Hotel at no cost to prepare for the Met Gala, he was obsessive about the room’s random finishes. “Take a look at the bathroom paper holder,” he said grinning, while showing a cellular phone photo of a refined chrome fixture.

In some ways, the designer remains to be a starry-eyed kid — a perspective that’s integral to his creative process, much of which happens late at night while tucked away in his bedroom.

When Lopez appeared on Vogue.com’s Met Gala red carpet livestream alongside model and longtime friend Paloma Elsesser, he was palpably nervous. “It was my coming out party, it was my debutante ball,” he said of the event. “All of the leaders are there, like literally [former mayor Michael] Bloomberg is correct next to me.”

It’s this naivety that affords Lopez the gap to mix his own visual narrative with codes from wealthy white communities.

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 Value Avenue. He talks concerning the fake Hermès and Chanel handbags wealthy women wear out within the daytime, while keeping the true versions safely tucked away of their closets. He’s obsessive about the Upper East Side and the subculture of philanthropy as a ’s hobby.

“For me, it’s about these spoon-fed families with generational money and attempting to crack their code. A number of these persons are wealthy from selling [everyday things like] French fries and we’re out here breaking our backs like attempting to recreate the wheel,” Lopez said.

“I’m attempting to construct this world where class, in a weird way, starts to blur out. It’s more about the way you present yourself and never where you come from. I really like a dinner and I really like getting dressed up — so why can’t I be a part of that conversation?”

Designers from marginalized communities often cannot afford to take the identical risks enjoyed by those that garner financial backing or who may come from generational wealth. Lopez said he has shouldered that risk with a view to pave the way in which for a latest generation.

“I actually have an obsession with becoming the American designer that uses their platform to assist other people. It takes someone becoming like a Ralph Lauren to have the opportunity to try this. I do know that’s my duty and I actually 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 wish to do it. I’m a contender now, it’s an actual business.”

The LVMH Prize — the winner of which might be revealed on June 7 — would bestow Lopez’s self-funded brand with a 300,000 euro prize.

“The cash could be used to grow the brand and develop latest resources for tailoring and production, for paying employees, and growing the brand to the place it must go with a view to open latest doors. We’re really small, I feel some people think we’re a large brand,” Lopez said.

And there’s quite a bit more he desires to do. He’s testing shoe development and is looking toward jewelry and interiors — the latter inspired by his recent jaunt at The Carlyle. “I’m such a house queen, I’m definitely doing home,” Lopez said. His first eyewear designs, resembling geriatric styling with oversize sunglasses layered atop readers, will launch in August at around $200.

Retail stores are also a part of his pipe dream. When asked what a dream store would appear to be, Lopez didn’t wax poetic about a flowery location or architect. “I really like drapes, I really like drapery, I really like carpets,” he said. “I’d like an oxblood carpet or a very beautiful beige or cream or camel color — wait, burnt camel — drapes. I really like earth tones, I really like a jewel tone.

“I feel for me, I’m more about slow and regular wins the race than regurgitating product and going crazy and being in one million stores. Then it’s not special anymore. I like being old fashioned and constructing a family,” he said.

But no matter his success, and the end result of the LVMH Prize, it’s likely Lopez will keep pressing onward.

“I don’t know the way to do anything. It’s form of like how if you happen to slice a carrot in Japan you’re the very best person to ever slice a carrot and you’re the carrot slicing master. I actually have the identical model in my head. I need to master this and do it right. I actually need to graduate and prove to myself because I didn’t go to highschool that I can do that. To prove to the world that what I wanted is what I got.”