It takes more than a little confidence to strut down a runway. It also requires the right beat to punctuate the walk and accentuate the mood. The music that accompanies the fashion helps evoke the vibe of a collection and the spirit of a designer. And music has a role long before the show, often providing inspiration during the creative process of designing. Fashion and music go hand in hand, and on Spotify, there are more than 630,000 fashion-inspired playlists created by listeners. So, as fashion month kicks off around the world, Spotify is celebrating the innovators leading the way and the music that inspires them with our new destination, The Soundtrack Behind The Runway.The Spotify destination features takeovers of some of our top fashion and culture playlists. Across New York, London, Milan, and Paris, designers including Advisry's Keith Herron, Luar's Raul Lopez, MAINS London's Skepta, Etro's Marco De Vincenzo, GCDS's Giuliano Calza, and Rabanne's Julien Dossena will curate the tracks for popular playlists like Fashion Forward and Runway. Follow us around the world to learn about Spotify's special playlist takeovers and hear from the designers and creative directors themselves.
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New York Fashion Week
Keith Herron, Advisry Founder and Creative Director
Raul Lopez, Luar Founder and Creative Director
In honor of New York Fashion Week, Keith Herron, the 23-year-old designer behind Advisry, will take over our COUNTER//CULTURE mixtape. Raul Lopez, the NYC-based designer behind Luar, will take over our Fashion Forward playlist.
How does music fit into your creative process? Keith Herron: I typically do most of my music discovery while creating or working. I'll simultaneously search for new music while doing other things.
Raul Lopez: I think with Luar I'm really inspired through music. I listen to music all day, from when I wake up to when I go to bed. And I love all types of music, especially stuff from the '90s and early 2000s. And in the '80s they had so many good music videos with such good style, and a lot of it definitely plays into my collections.
What are your biggest sources of inspiration? Keith: Random adventures, nature walks, trying new things, and experiencing great art are my greatest sources of inspiration. Really, just remaining open-minded and following what I love always leads me to a place of inspiration. With art, for example, and diving deep into a medium, there are a lot of misses you have to endure. But all it takes is one great hit to restore all hope in the journey and make the wait worth it. That moment inspires so much.
Raul: Being raised in the '90s and early 2000s, music and fashion really collided. I feel like we look so much to artists for inspo. Platforms like MTV, BET, VH1 were the only way to nourish yourself with fashion because we obviously weren't going to fashion shows. For us, that was our fashion show-seeing what stylists were putting on the artist.
What artists, songs, or genres inspire you or were on your musical mood board for New York Fashion Week? Keith: While working on my collection for this show, Tammy Lucas, a very early collaborator of The Neptunes, released some demos from the 1996-97 era that were previously unheard. I probably listened to Say Your Goodbyes and I Can't Explain, It's Called Love 2,000 times each while working on this collection. I also was taking a deep dive into Janet Jackson's catalog. She is amazing.
Raul: So, this collection is called Socorro, which means help in Spanish. And there is this dembow song from the Dominican Republic by Jey One called Socorro. The song comes from this one specific neighborhood that I like to hang out in called El Hoyo De Bartola. And in that song, Jey One's like, I'm with God, but I'm also with your enemy and you're always trying to take me down and I'm always trying to move forward, but you always try to pull me back. So, I was standing there, and this song is playing and preaching, and it resonated with me. I always play off of some type of memory, like this one with the song, because Luar is just like chapters in a book. I'm not a writer. So it's these garments that I make that are like sentences.
What makes New York Fashion Week unique? How do you infuse that into your collection? Keith: New York is unique because it is the grandest stage of the most culturally diverse country in the world. Though that doesn't equal the most diversity on the calendar itself, that culture does get to poke out subconsciously or unconsciously through the collections we see. I always try to be a reflection of myself and my community's voice with my collections, alongside my country itself. I love American fashion motifs; they are some of my favorites. I'm consistently working on creating my own versions of American classics like blue jeans and plaid shirts.
Raul: It's a melting pot of different cultures and different people and different walks of lives. And, I think, for me, growing up in New York, this is where hip-hop started. This is where so many different genres started, and it inspires the world in so many different ways. And the grittiness of it mixed with the luxury of it. It's like the kids trying to sneak in who come up from these hoods, they're like, Oh no, I'm going and I'm gonna make it. That's definitely not happening in Paris. I've been to Paris shows and London shows and it's way more organized, but you go to my show-it's insanity. That love for fashion and design is so crazy. It's kind of amazing, especially now. They're so hardcore about it. It's known that you gotta get there early because you might not get in and I love that.
Milan Fashion Week
Marco De Vincenzo, Etro Creative Director
Giuliano C
