“I’m just doing an unboxing,” M.A.C.’s global creative director Drew Elliot tells LUAR founder Raul Lopez. It’s not long before the designer’s FW25 collection walks the runway, and he’s on a Zoom call from home in Brooklyn. Elliot, who is at the cosmetics brand’s studio in SoHo, holds up a dustbag with Luar x M.A.C. scrawled on black fabric. What’s inside feels like it has been about 20 years in the making.
“I started as a cashier,” Lopez remembers of the moment his M.A.C. relationship began at the Herald Square Macy’s counter. “It was probably one of the best experiences of my life, it was actually so fun.” He was soon an artist for the brand and remembers wearing his makeup belt to the club after gigs. Now, he’s still wearing his own beat every day (“I don’t even go to the bodega without concealer.”) and stopping by the same counter on his daily commute. “A lot of my friends still work for the company, so we still kiki,” he says, though he’s been keeping a big secret from everybody. “I’ve been wanting to tell ’em that I’m doing a collab so bad and I can’t,” Lopez admits. Conversations began in 2023, and a limited-edition M.A.C. x Luar Ana Artistry Bag is finally in his hands.
Lopez holds the prototype, its exterior a black faux crocodile, its interior designed to protect artists’ brushes (and so much more). “I can put all my shit in here,” he says, naming extra socks and headphones as typical carryons. “I know so many makeup girlies that are really going to live for this.” It’s a true hybrid piece featuring “the same lining inside that MAC uses for their brush belts, and then we use our factories,” Lopez explains of creating the concept alongside the makeup house’s cosmetics designers. “They’re so fab, you have to meet them. ICONIC.” Elliot, who came to MAC from Paper Magazine, agrees. “I always say M.A.C. is the most fashionable makeup brand.” Since the ’90s, they’ve worked with “over 300 different designers, not shows, designers around the world,” he says. “Strobe Cream came out of a show that they did with Alexander McQueen,” Elliot notes of developing the “holy grail” product based on a beauty look that walked the runway.
