Designer Raul Lopez Makes Unique Wedding Dress for His Best Friend

Designer Raul Lopez is known for his brand, Luar, a gender-fluid and visionary New York label. This past weekend, Lopez’s immense skill and talent was on display in the best way possible; in the form of a custom wedding dress for his best friend Cynthia Cervantes.

Cervantes married her longtime partner Travis Gumbs in Michoacan, Mexico. The dress is reportedly inspired by Aztec goddesses, Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth, Artemisia I etc. Even with such a long list of supposed references, Lopez insists that “The dress is a reflection of her: strong and sassy because of the corset, soft and feminine like the ruffles, precious like the Swarovski crystals, and endearing like the pleats.”

The dress was meant to be non-traditional, as far as western bridal dresses go. Cervantes herself says that she never really fawned over the specifics of her wedding dress, not even as a little girl. But once she was engaged, she got to work with Lopez on the design; even creating a mood board. Cervantes’s main description was something in the vein of a Mexican Resplendor headpiece.

While the concept itself took months, Lopez only took three weeks to reconstruct the dress. Pretty impressive for the designer’s first wedding dress, though according to Lopez, there is one exception; “[The dresses] I made as a kid and wore around the house when no one was home.”

Ultimately, Cervantes had a wider vision in mind when it came to the aesthetic of her dress; she was “exploring the idea of what it means to create your own traditions, while also paying homage to the foundations of culture and family. What does it mean for a woman to marry in today’s climate?”

Featured Image by J E Theriot

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