The corporate dollars powering your favorite indie brands

NEW YORK — Luar's Ana bag is one of fashion's most covetable accessories. A little rectangle with a rounded, oversize handle, it retails for $300 to $400 but marks its carrier as an insider because it is the product of Raul Lopez — a queer Latino designer known for his riotous, nightlife-ready, gravity-defying garments. (Guests regularly attend his shows in assless chaps or bras with jeans.) It is the Telfar tote for streetwise, fashion-savvy snobs and sassy pop stars — in other words, it has credibility that a Chanel, Hermes or Louis Vuitton bag could never possess.

This season, this symbol of frugal elitism comes to you with a refresh courtesy of ... American Express?

While it's not the first co-branded product Amex has produced, it is certainly one of their more niche projects: a merger of indie cred and big capital.

Wrapped around the bag's body are charms that epitomize the Amex Gold lifestyle: an airplane, a cocktail, the Luar logo, a cheeseburger and a little gold rectangle of debt and reward points. It comes in three shades of metallic.

Skip to end of carousel The Style sectionStyle is where The Washington Post explains what's happening on the front lines of culture — including the arts, media, social trends, politics and yes, fashion — with wit, personality and deep reporting. For more Style stories,. To subscribe to the Style Memo newsletter,. End of carousel Independent designers are increasingly fighting for attention among the behemoth brand names like Michael Kors and Coach — labels whose profits eclipse the indies by orders of magnitude. Many of those designers — like Lopez, LaQuan Smith or Jackson Wiederhoeft, known for their theatrical, performance-driven runways — feel a show is essential to keeping their names in the news (and on the minds of shoppers).

But a runway production can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, even for a more muted affair, and that means sponsors are necessary. In the past, fashion companies have looked to businesses that have a natural synergy with their world: makeup brands, say, or liquor or bottled water brands, that can place a container of their goodies on show attendees' seats.

Now, those sources of funding are becoming more corporate: banks, credit cards and tech companies, which see small American designers as a direct route to that ever-elusive class — cool people. If many indie darlings of the past may have bristled at such blatantly capitalistic dalliances, the new guard is taking a cheekier approach. Why take on venture capital when you can maintain your control by sending a couple of pairs of Samsung-themed pajamas down your runway?

"Raul came with such energy and understanding of what the benefits meant," Elizabeth Crosta, an American Express vice president for communications, said of the Luar partnership. "He understands our brand."

Amex has made a push around its Gold card over the past several years to appeal more to millennials and Gen Z. Its research shows that those demographics like to spend on dining out — in fact, global spending on restaurants among the company's customers reached $100 billion in 2023.

American Express paid to make the bags, though they will be sold exclusively through Luar's site because Amex, as a bank holding company, cannot keep or own any inventory. Amex was also a sponsor of the Luar show and after-party. That investment helped Lopez, who has shown in Brooklyn warehouses for the past several seasons, to stage his show in the middle of Rockefeller Plaza, with Luar logo flags flying high behind the runway with United Nations-esque pomp.

A few days before his show, Lopez surveyed the Amex bags among his other accessories and bags. "She cute," he said in approval.

Luar was not the only surprising team-up of big capital and indie design. At Sandy Liang's sparkly, Y2K-influenced show in the Flatiron District on Sunday afternoon, guests received small boxes with the designer's name engraved in silver next to the Android logo. Inside, three barrettes: one heart; one star; one chubby, red-eyed robot. (Liang and Android also collaborated on a runway-only gadget : a pastel case for the new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 phone.)

And ahead of LaQuan Smith's show last week at Brooklyn's 99 Scott Studio, each guest got a $200 voucher QR code to take an Uber to the venue and back, courtesy of Samsung. (Vouchers expired at 3:30 a.m., about six hours after the show ended.) Models came down the runway wearing Samsung Galaxy Rings, the tech giant's shiny new wellness-tracking accessory. Gift bags included a Galaxy Ring sizing kit and, yes, a Z Flip6 phone, which retails for $1,099.

Another of the show's sponsors also made its presence known via gift bag. A half-sheet of cardstock offered four paragraphs about the fashion industry's scarcity of Black designers. The sign-off at the bottom, next to a familiar golden M: "Stay Slayed, From Your Friends at McDonald's."

Pornhub, a veteran sponsor of New York Fashion Week events, has partnered with Hood by Air and Vaquera in years past, and sponsored shows during this year's fashion week by Private Policy, Untitled Co. and Shao. At Wednesday's Private Policy show at the Altman Building in Manhattan, the porn website was name-checked on the back of super-publicist Kelly Cutrone's jacket .

"We really feel really strongly about supporting the fashion community," said Alex Kekesi, Pornhub's head of community and brand. "Especially in New York, there's like so many intersections between, sex work and fashion. ... Unfortunately, a lot of the time, these emerging designers just don't have the funding to break through."

Sponsorship deals aren't always so visible to the naked eye.

Jackson Wiederhoeft's label, Wiederhoeft, known for dazzling, sometimes darkly fantastical takes on classic womenswear silhouettes, treated guests to a three-part spectacle that was just one part fashion show. An interpretive sequence about love lost, performed by seven dancers, gave way to a celestial finale: more than two dozen models floating out of a light-flooded doorway in identical white corseted bridal gowns, in sizes from 00 to 30. Wiederhoeft told The Washington Post that the show was creatively influenced by a breakup with his boyfriend earlier in the year.

Nowhere to be seen on the runway: logos or visible branding from Wiederhoeft's main sponsors, Michelin and Capital One. (Although one silk satin was dyed in wine from another sponsor, the winemaker Silver Oak.) But seats at the show were made available to Capital One cardholders, and the designer hosted a dinner in the same venue afterward for cardholders, too.

Wiederhoeft is such a hot designer right now," said Monica Weaver, the head of Capital One's branded card partnerships and experiences. "And we're always looking to support artists in their industries."

For Jackson Wiederhoeft, without the Capital One and Michelin partnerships there wouldn't have been enough funding for a show this year at all — a tough break for a label that has gained momentum over the past few years.

A full Wiederhoeft show "ends up being a few hundred thousand dollars," he said. "And I'd say we're in, like, the mid-tier.

"It's expensive," he added. "But I believe people should get paid what they're worth, and I'd love to get to a place one day where everyone can make their full rate."

The partnerships with Capital One and Michelin, Wiederhoeft said, came at "a really make-or-break moment." For a brand like his, "it's a matter of life and death."