Raul Lopez has been using custom soundtracks for his runway shows for as long as he’s been putting clothes on the runway—that is, give or take 10 years. Custom, of course, not as in a really good mix of hits, but as in completely new, produced from scratch, music. What gives this away is that Lopez’s shows often revolve around a key idea that examines both his identity and the zeitgeist, and this concept is almost always spelled out by the speakers that line each runway.
Last night’s show, the last nighttime presentation this New York Fashion Week, was titled “El Pato” after the gay slur used in some Caribbean and Latin American countries. Lopez said the idea was to reclaim the word—similarly to how queer English speakers have recontextualized “faggot” and, well, “queer,” of late. “I had strikes against me for being Latino, for being flamboyant, being gay, for dressing the way I dress,” Lopez said backstage: “I’m not going in the closet for nobody ever again.”
How Lopez chose to communicate this on the runway was with an abundance of feathers, a flamboyant and dramatic flair with duster coats and heeled boots and subverted tailoring, and even a knit catsuit that caused the wearer’s arms to bend into a limp wrist gesture. Most forcefully, Lopez opened the show with a remix of “El Gran Varón” by Willie Colón, a late ’80s salsa song that has, said Lopez, become the soundtrack to the gay experience for many Latinos his generation. The song tells the story of Simón, a young man who was his father’s pride and joy until he transitioned and eventually died of AIDS. The song, and the life of Simón, was to Lopez’s point often offered as a cautionary tale—one of the many insidious ways in which homophobia manifested in Latino culture.
But Lopez—pun intended—never does anything straight. Here he breaks down, together with his longtime producers Aaron Ross and Matthew Arkell of Gatekeeper, how to make a custom soundtrack for a runway show.
Step 1: Find the Right Producers
First and foremost, Lopez found a pair of producers who, in his words, “get it.” He met Gatekeeper back in the early 2010s, he says, when they did the soundtrack for his very first Luar show in 2013. “God, that was Bluetooth speakers at a park,” Lopez jokes, “I thought I was going to get arrested.”
“Those shows were more like fantasy ambient soundscapes,” remember the producers, “they were slightly less straightforward, clubby, and a little more insane.” “There was a weird rendition of ‘Across the Universe’ by some German band we referenced,” Lopez says.
Step 2: Identify the Right References, Then Reimagine Them Completely
How it often goes, Lopez says, is that he’ll text Ross a few references that help him set the tone and vibe, he’ll explain the collection and walk through the moodboard, and then “let them do their magic with their fingers.” The key reference in this case was the song by Colón. “Instead of just DJing the tracks that Raul provides we make music that’s bespoke for the show inspired by them,” Ross says, “unless it’s a powerful nostalgic or personal moment, everything else you guys do front scratch,” Lopez adds. Hence why the song by Colón opened the show before the custom-made music started to set the rhythm of the runway.
Step 3: Everyone Does Their Thing, Then Regroups
“I’ll usually do a pass with Matt for a couple of sessions and then Raul will come over to give us feedback, or ask for vocals, or figure out what needs to be done,” says Ross.
They start the process anywhere from two months to just three weeks in advance, depending on how far along Lopez is with the collection. “It can come together pretty quick because Aaron gets excited,” Arkell says, with Ross adding, “we’re not crafting a vibe, we know what it is, we start with something strong already.”
Step 4: Vocals, Lyrics, and Key Concept-to-Reality Touches
“This is when I come into the studio and I’m like, I need more faggotness,” Lopez jokes. He is talking about throwing in those deep cut references only he can provide. Because the music is made from scratch, he explains, those references—for example, a year ago Lopez created a collection about the return of the metrosexual, which he folded into the soundscape as vocals—have to sometimes be literal.
Ross and Arkell explain that they’ll often recur to AI-generated vocals to fold in Lopez’s ideas. “We’ll write some stuff and have Lara Croft say it,” they joked. One season, Lopez recalls, they asked Chat GPT to define Luar. “From the runways of Paris to the bodegas of New York…” is what the computer offered. “Not no,” laughs Lopez, “it was hilarious, but it worked.”
This season, Lopez says, there was no need for a Lara Croft stand-in. Instead, in addition to the story of Simón, Lopez decided to homage one of his favorite New York “Patos.” “Xander used to do a door in New York, one of the hardest clubs to get into back in the city’s club era,” he said of the voice-over heard scattered throughout the soundtrack following the song by Colón.
“The show has this slow opening so we can bring people into the world and give this ethereal, nostalgic mood,” said Ross, “then it transitions to the Xander sample of him at a door, which is amazing material because he is saying some hilarious stuff that is pure gold.”
Lopez says that he found a recording someone did of Xander in 2003. He’s at the club’s door “yelling at people” about how they’re not getting in, looking at their clothes, asking them to walk, or how he’s sober and it’s “not going to be cute for y’all,” Lopez laughs. Xander, he says, did the door at APT in the Meatpacking district. “I wanted to give him his flowers because he’s a New York legend, you saw all the finance dudes and celebrities throwing him money, begging him to get in,” Lopez says, “it’s also a crazy analogy about how we [queer people] have always been here.”
Step 5: Figure Out the Showtime Logistics, and Make it Happen
There’s usually a mad dash in the days leading up to the show, the producers say. “The funny problem is that you never know how long a fashion show is going to be,” they say. Ross and Arkell prepare for a standard-ish length of 20 or so minutes. The least they want to hear is that you need more, really. “Two minutes is a really long time in music, but in fashion it’s no time at all,” Ross says.
“You are negotiating between all of these things, and need to prepare for a model walking slower that day, or faster,” the producers explain. “We always trigger the finale live,” they add. “It’s funny to see them on the decks because they’re not DJs,” Lopez says, pointing out that Ross and Arkell are calling in from a professional audio production booth, “but for it to work they are there live on the night of,” he adds.
Ross says they prepare to make changes at the very last minute: “There’s always so much going on before the show and Raul has to make a million decisions,” he says, "The music is important, but it’s not the collection.”
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