© Distributed by The New York Times Licensing Group
(Desmond Picotte para The New York Times)
A few days after a January snowstorm, Juan Luis Londoño Arias, the 28-year-old Colombian pop star known artistically as Maluma, entered a midtown Manhattan corporate building near Macy’s flagship store. He was wearing a periwinkle, tie-dyed jacket and jeans, and had somehow managed to keep his thick-soled white leather Prada boots spotless, despite the rivers of sleet on the sidewalks. As if by magic, shortly after he appeared, the sun broke through the overcast sky.
Maluma, who sometimes calls himself “Papi Juancho”, had just arrived from his hometown of Medellin, Colombia, where he took a month off from his dizzying work schedule. He was in New York to promote two movies: Charm, Disney’s popular new animated film about a family haunted house in Colombia, in which he plays a square-jawed, flowing-haired hunk; and the romantic comedy Marry mein which he plays Bastian, Jennifer Lopez’s cheating fiancé.
But first, she had to promote a clothing line.
The pastel blue suit he was wearing that afternoon was from his first collection of ready to wear called Royalty by Maluma, a collaboration with Reunited Clothing and Macy’s that is expected to be available in stores on March 24. Although he was involved in the design process, he had not yet had a chance to see the finished collection and wanted to see it before flying to Europe to start a tour (tickets for his first concert, at the Accor Arena in Paris, are already sold out). .
Macy’s had been studying the possibility of collaborating with Maluma for several years, according to Durand Guion, the company’s vice president of fashion. His 61 million Instagram followers and distinctive personal style were certainly factors, but it was Maluma’s enthusiasm for making the collection that sealed the deal. “We were in a daze after the first meeting because this wasn’t just easy, it was fun, and we felt Maluma every step of the way,” Guion said.
“She’s never afraid to try anything on — she’ll try on a women’s coat and say, ‘I want this, let’s do this,’” Hilda Batayneh, executive creative director of Reunited Clothing, said of her openness throughout the design process. “The line is really Maluma. When you look at it, you can see him or bits of him in every piece.”
build an empire
More than a decade ago, when he was 16 years old, Maluma decided to dedicate himself to music, and not football, his first passion. In that time, she went from singing at quinceañeras in Medellín to performing at stadiums. In 2018, the same year she sold out Madison Square Garden, she won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album for F.A.M.E. He has collaborated with Shakira, Madonna and The Weeknd, among others.
However, with all his achievements, Maluma wondered what was coming next.
“I’m building my empire,” he said, with a melodious Paisa accent, the Colombian inflection that rises and falls singsong. “It is the most productive moment of my life, suddenly time is going to pass me by and opportunities are going to go away”.
She chose the fabrics and cuts of the pieces, and tried to make the collection with gender fluidity in mind. The clothes are inspired by his hometown, he said, where he, his parents and his sister still live.
“The Medellin sky is special to me,” Maluma said, his walnut-colored eyes shining brighter than the huge diamonds he wears around his neck. “I don’t know, I get there and I see the sky totally different from how I see it anywhere in the world.”
In his Royalty collection, he has tried to capture that ultramarine tone, along with the vivid greens and characteristic tiles of Medellín, the city of Antioquia from which he originates. He wanted the collection to be immersed in his culture and reflect symbols important to him, such as a tattoo-like crown motif on his neck.
“If you go to Medellín, or if you go to Colombia in general, you ask a taxi driver to help you with an address or something, and the taxi driver will not help you with the address, but will take you to the place ”, Maluma said, laughing. “To me that means a lot.”
He thinks his warmth is often overshadowed by his tremendous stage persona. Juan Luis, he said, referring to his first name, is disciplined and focuses on the values that his family has given him. His friends say they can’t tell the difference.
“When I met Maluma I immediately felt his energy and charming personality,” Donatella Versace, a close friend and collaborator, said in an email. “He is the kind of man who makes a difference and makes the world a better place.”
Versace, who refers to Maluma as a “versace king”, designed the torrid red leather suit that Maluma wore to the Met Gala last year, the second he went to. They arrived together, both with dyed blonde hair. In her immaculate white corseted gown, she seemed to be the angel of his diabolical attire.
The two have collaborated on custom Versace outfits for their performances and red carpet appearances. She has also borrowed her dog, a dark brown Doberman named Buddha, for Versace’s spring/summer 2022 men’s campaign.
“He is a man who is bold enough to experiment and play with his style, and I find this almost as attractive as his music,” Versace said. “He always has a very strong instinct for what he wants.”
Maluma’s ability to shed fashion norms and his drive to define his style by what he feels are at the core of his Royalty collection. Many pieces, like an off-white crepe shirt with diamond-shaped stone buttons, are meant to be unisex.
“I like that everything, for example men’s, can be worn by women without a problem,” said Maluma, as he toured the store. “That for me was like one of the keys to this collection”
At the end of last year, collaborated with Olivier Rousteing, the creative director of Balmain, in a limited edition collection inspired by the neon colors that light up Miami. It became the brand’s best-selling collection, according to Rousteing.
The veteran designer appreciates that Maluma disregards the rigid rules of fashion and refers to his blind spots as “indifference”. Rousteing finds her lack of fashion experience refreshing and believes it can help fuel her creativity.
“It doesn’t have the same limits that we might have in the fashion world,” Rousteing said. “It can bring completely opposite things together.”
As a young man, Maluma spent most of his adolescence practicing to be an international superstar, armed with social media. He has strategically turned the camera on himself, sharing his rise firsthand.
Unlike Ricky Martin, a hugely successful Latino who also became a star in the Anglo world by singing in English, Maluma is reluctant to use English for the US market. “I’m sure it’s going to be liked all over the world, without the need to put out a song in English,” he said. Critics tend to classify him as a singer or reggaeton player, but he considers himself more of a chameleon.
“I don’t have any defined gender, I like to flow, really,” said Maluma, his soft voice getting stronger with confidence. “I like to go through different musical genres, I like to dress in different ways, I like to be a box of surprises and evolve.”
“Maluma is not a genre, but rather a movement,” he said, referring to his character on stage. “It’s more like an ecosystem, a world with different ramifications and they all start from the same thing: from love to art.”
Sandra E. Garcia is a Styles reporter for the Times and co-author of Finish the Fight! The Brave and Revolutionary Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote.