Beyoncé? In Bushwick? In her first public appearance after announcing Renaissance: Act II at the Super Bowl on Sunday, Beyoncé attended the Luar show tonight alongside her mother and her sister Solange, whose son Julez Smith Jr. walked the show. Did Raul Lopez just win the New York Fashion Week Olympics?
Autocorrect edits Luar to liar. The computer will learn in due time, but there is an amusing synchronicity in the fact that Lopez titled this Luar collection Deceptionista. Now what, pray tell, is a deceptionista? The answer starts with another question: Remember the metrosexual?
The term was coined in 1994 by Mark Simpson. The metrosexual, Simpson wrote then, was a single young man living in a metropolis in close proximity to the best gyms, shops, and social spaces. He had vast disposable income, and spent it mostly on himself. The metrosexual is a well-manicured man whose sexuality is often immaterial—though he’s presumably heterosexual—who is well groomed, well-mannered, and has good style. For further context, David Beckham was once described as the “biggest metrosexual in Britain.”
“They’re back, and it comes in cycles,” said Lopez, pointing at images of Elizabethan and Victorian era men in brocades, makeup, and wigs; men in the late ’70s with tight knits and blow-dried hair; and in the ’90s and aughts in crop tops and with frosted tips. Taped on Lopez’s studio wall were images of Nicholas Hoult as Peter the Great, a portrait of “one of the Tudors,” and snapshots of Brad Pitt, David Beckham, and Matthew McConaughey in the early 2000s. “There are different generations of the metrosexual, and now we are in the era of the stray,” said Lopez with the solemnity of a studied anthropologist. A stray, dear reader, is “a straight gay.”
The collection in itself was an anthology of the metrosexual from the perspective of a queer man. “When I was coming up as a gay man, metrosexual was also a word to mask yourself,” said Lopez. “It was easier to say ‘Oh, he’s not gay, he’s just metro.’” While the word was used derogatorily, it was “easier than being gay.” Thirty years later, the term has somewhat fallen out of style, though, according to Lopez, it hasn’t gone away: “Now we have the manicured men that aren’t necessarily queer baiting, but people say they are,” said the designer. You know the ones, actors with pearl necklaces and little women’s handbags worn as cross bodies, “the ‘trade’ filming a full ‘beat’ on TikTok” [meaning a hyper-masculine looking man doing a full face of makeup on camera], and “the man wanting to emulate the look of a queer person or that of a chic woman.”
Source link
