If gender is a construct, then clothes are the scaffolding upon which the myth hangs. Whether it's made of cotton, linen, or suede, a shirt is never just a shirt, but a vast constellation of assumptions, privileges, and desires. Getting dressed each morning is a way of signaling to the world who you are and who you hope to be.
Queer and trans communities have always known this. That’s precisely why it’s so troubling that we have been underrepresented in the fashion industry for decades, even as our looks get stolen without compensation or consent. While white gay men like Tom Ford, Michael Kors, and Giorgio Armani have long defined what is considered stylish, the rest of the queer community has only recently been able to claim a fraction of their power in the field. Among this rising generation is the designer Sara Lopez, who launched the label A--Company in 2018.
Lopez started A--Company after working for half a decade at small fashion labels in New York City, where she learned how to source materials, manage a staff, and turn a profit. But her dream had always been to start a label of her own. Over the past five years, Lopez has made a name for herself by producing detailed, highly structured garments. She is largely interested in what she describes as “the archetypal wardrobe,” or pieces that have been worn in different ways across decades. Under Lopez’s eye, classic pieces like a tuxedo jacket or a men’s suit become new. In previous seasons, she has created trench coats that billow like summer dresses and voluptuously oversized uniforms.
She not only toys with gender but forces the viewer to question why they have become so wed to certain conceptions of a garment in the first place. Why, for example, are the buttons on a button-down shirt always worn at the front of the chest? From there, it’s not difficult to wonder why certain articles of clothing are associated with any gender at all.
Lopez has built a career by answering these questions in rigorous, unexpected, and wholly delightful ways. Her most recent capsule collection was no exception. In lieu of a catwalk, the designer presented the clothes during a performance of the Greek tragedy Antigone. Her reason was simple. “We’ve seen a lot of catwalks,” she tells me after the play with a laugh.
In the play, Antigone is committed to burying her dead brother, Polynices, even though the dictatorial King Creon (played in this production by an irridescent Jeremy O. Harris) has decreed that he cannot receive burial rites due to his crimes against the state. Antigone resists and buries her brother anyway. The punishment is death.
Led by the queer director Daphné Dumons, the cast members picked their characters at random with no respect to gender, mirroring the intentional-yet-anarchic approach that Lopez brings to clothing. The launching point for the collection was the vest worn by the Chorus Leader, played by Bobbi Salvör Menuez. Lopez describes it as a “tailored jacket with meticulous cuts” and a shirt constructed to hang off the back of the body. For Antigone, played by Rad Pereira, Lopez created a ripped denim jacket with a blazer peeking through. She topped off the look with a crisp white shirt that was folded like a piece of origami. Despite the rips and cuts, Lopez describes each outfit as a “feat of construction.”
It is straightforward to make a dress with a pattern that has been sewn thousands of times. It is more complicated to make shirts, outerwear, and undergarments that weave together, creating a seamless story that stretches beyond gender constructs. Like queerness itself, self-expression through fashion requires inventiveness, creativity, and extra effort.
While other fashion designers might have mood boards covered in pictures of Kate Moss from the 1990s to inspire their outfits, each collection Lopez creates is inspired by queer theory. For this one, she was interested in making cuts after attending a lecture by the American academic and author Jack Halberstam. In his 2011 book The Queer Art of Failure, Halberstam argues that liberation is found in the “mistakes” that define queer life. Failure allows us to recognize paths that would have been foreclosed if one pursued capitalist, heteronormative modes of perfection. For example, the “failure” to get married is a chance to embrace alternative forms of queer love and kinship. In Lopez’s hands, these “failures” become the moments that define the clothes. The cuts and slashes that another designer might view as failures are seen instead as entry points toward embodiment.
As Lopez describes her creative process to me, it strikes me that her work is a form of care for queer and trans people. While there are infinite, painfully violent examples of that care being denied all around us, Lopez’s work offers a reminder that it does not have to be that way. That the very reason queer and trans people are under attack is because our existence offers an opening toward a more heterogeneous world.
The care Lopez provides extends beyond the people who wear her clothes and into all aspects of her business. Unlike most fashion labels, Lopez produces each item in small quantities that allow her to monitor her entire supply chain. All of her garments are made in New York City, and she describes intimate relationships with her suppliers. “We can make beautiful objects in a conscious way,” she emphasizes.
At the end of our conversation, we circle around the idea of beauty. How do you create beautiful clothes that are not predicated on the suffering of others? What is the purpose and responsibility of fashion in a world that is rife with inequality and horror?
Lopez says she selected November 1 for the performance because it was Day of the Dead, which resonated with Antigone’s struggle to bury her brother. On the night of the performance, the Israeli military had been bombing Gaza for three weeks, killing thousands of Palestinians, with hundreds caught under collapsed buildings and rubble, unreachable by friends and family. Before we sat down to watch the play, our phones had been a constant stream of images: fathers shouting for their children in the wreckage, toddlers holding their teddy bears, blood and dust caked to their faces. “Do we need to see clothes right now?” Lopez says she asked herself before the show.
And yet, the play sparked a moment of collective reckoning. Facing death after burying her brother, Antigone argues that tyrants should be challenged and unjust laws broken. “Is one life worth mourning more than another?” she asked the audience. Her words cut through the room like a knife.
It reminded me of the ancient purpose of theater: to remember our permanent, indelible human bond. Perhaps we do not expect this from fashion shows because we have not been forced to see it before. More often than not, fashion has functioned as a mirage, allowing audiences to turn away from the violence that enables our consumption. This is unjust. Fashion should help us see the world — and our responsibility to end the oppressive systems that structure it — in new ways. A--Company is helping us look.
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