Clad in Raúl López, you don’t enter a room — you seep under its skin. In sequins or steel, the impact is subdermal. His cuts hum with tension, wired with emotional static, calibrated for maximum slink and sway.

Born in Williamsburg to Dominican parents, Raúl López’s childhood stitched grit with gleam. His mother, Ana — petite yet a pillar of unsparing strength and taste — sewed bursts of brightness into every garment, even after long days at the hat factory. She was the first to see who he was meant to be, the impulse behind his dashing taste and love for clothes. His father, who rose from fruit vendor to superintendent, then landlord and property owner, built an empire one city block at a time. Though the family now lives in Long Island, their Brooklyn apartment remains a touchstone: a place where ambition was cast amid loud prints and tireless days. The household thrummed with hustle and heart — a current still coursing through Raúl’s work.

As a child, Raúl’s family nicknamed him “Little Tie”: the kid who wore blazers and ties to school not to impress, but to anchor himself. To belong without asking. At home, he became a quiet scholar of his mother’s dressing rituals, absorbing every move, every crisp fit, every deliberate detail — even as women’s stores remained off-limits. He was composing, transmuting, owning it before it landed fully.

We often hold our families up like mirrors, reflecting what to keep, what to break, what’s safe to wear loud. Raúl’s work shares that stance but doesn’t tiptoe around legacy. It wears it like a blade, owning the beauty and the barb alike. Take the Ana bag: its circular handles do more than nod, they loop back to the women of his kin. Named after a trinity of Anas — his grandmother, mother, and sister — the bag, a staple of his vestiaire, refuses to sit pretty. It stands. It commands. You don’t carry LUAR’s designs; they claim you. They may stand pointed, but ache if you know where to touch. They say, “Don’t mess with me,” and yet, “Lay your eyes on me.” Slip one on, and you’re summoning something.