LUAR turns Christopher Street and Columbus into one collision course
Dig out LUAR’s unveiling of its Spring/Summer 2027 runway show collection. Raul Lopez titled the season Christopher Street Columbus, bringing two very different New York and Caribbean histories into the same frame.
The show landed beneath the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, taking LUAR away from the usual Manhattan runway circuit and straight into the boroughs that have always mattered to Lopez’s idea of New York. The title plays with Christopher Street — tied to the downtown nightlife and street codes that shaped him — and Christopher Columbus, approached through the history of naming, claiming and colonization that carries a much different weight for a Dominican designer.
LUAR SS27
Christopher Street Columbus
Raul Lopez’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection collides Tudor-era dress, early-2000s New York street codes, Dominican references and LUAR’s sharp take on tailoring.
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Lopez reaches into 15th- and 16th-century dress and yanks those codes into early-2000s New York. Pleated breeches, sharp shoulders, doublets, dramatic sleeves and ceremonial proportions get roughed up by biker jackets, track pieces and streetwear attitude. The result never sits politely in one century.
The textiles carry just as much story. Lopez photographed cacao pods in the Dominican Republic, then translated their yellows, greens and browns into printed silk. Elsewhere, darker jacquards reference the earthy decay of cacao, while striped velvet, lace, moiré and sequins keep the collection moving between richness and grit.
And because this is LUAR, the accessories refuse to sit quietly. The collection includes pouchettes made with MCM, sharp mules, sporty flip-flops with Brazilian brand Kenner, ripped gloves exposing jeweled fingers and feathered boas pushed into even more bounce.
What makes the collection click is that Lopez does not try to smooth out the contradictions. Christopher Street and Christopher Columbus are supposed to clash. One represents lived New York identity, reinvention and survival; the other arrives with the baggage of conquest and imposed naming. LUAR leaves those histories rubbing against each other through tailoring, proportion and attitude rather than pretending they neatly reconcile.
Dig out the full LUAR Spring/Summer 2027 collection below. From ceremonial tailoring to street-coded layers and accessories, Christopher Street Columbus keeps the tension visible all the way through.
Shown in Queens beneath the Unisphere, the collection feels especially pointed in a season where location itself becomes part of the clothes. LUAR did not need Manhattan to make the statement. The outer borough was part of it.
Source: LUAR; FY Magazine!; Vogue.
