Luar Brings Bygone Beauty to the New York Underground

In New York City, it can be difficult to pause long enough to consider your surroundings: where you are now, what stood there before, and the histories that continue to occupy the same ground. For Spring/Summer 2027, Luar asks us to do exactly that—in a confrontation and celebration of the identities that shape and layer the city.

 

Staged beneath the Unisphere in Queens during New York Fashion Week, designer Raul Lopez’s Christopher Street Columbus collection brings seemingly disparate eras into a single frame, revealing where they collide and clash in full display.

 

That tension runs through the clothes. References to 15th  and 16th century dress emerge alongside the visual language of early-aughts New York, with historical grandeur filtered through the immediacy of the street. Structured tailoring gives way to looser, more instinctive forms; ceremonial proportions meet everyday utility; and familiar signifiers of luxury and masculinity are pulled apart and reconstructed. It’s at once gritty and glamorous, a reflection of Lopez’s manifold, multidimensional muses—and the collision of references we’ve come to expect from Luar.

 

Backstage, that same collision of worlds extended above the neck. Cleopatra-like eyes, theatrical gestures, and heightened character transformed the face into another site of historical remixing. Key makeup artist Andrew Dahling, working with MAC Cosmetics, looked to bygone eras—from the Tudors to the pharoahs—while pulling the references firmly into New York’s subcultural history.

 

“We are playing with Elizabethan, Tudor-style fantasy,” Dahling explains. “I wanted to bring the element of stage production and fantasy, with heavy inspiration from the 1980s punk era and ballroom mixed with drag.”

 

Dramatic kohl-lined eyes, glittering metallics in flashes of silver and gold, and crystallized eye masks that frame the face (calling to mind David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane) bring a sense of theatricality to the look. Against that intensity, the complexion remains naturally sculpted, with neutral shades subtly defining the cheekbones and contours of the face. Expressive and otherworldly, the makeup plays between opulence and rawness, allowing the eyes to take on an almost transformative quality.

 

In an era of minimalist, skin-first beauty, SS27’s striking point of view was a welcome counterpoint that brought expression back into the mix. As the refinement of court portraiture met the exaggeration of the stage, Dahling’s downtown sensibilities brought a distinctly New York irreverence, one that Luar has long referenced and reinvented. Like Lopez’s clothes, the makeup wasn’t interested in keeping centuries—or cultural codes—neatly separated.