“Everything Was Always Going To Be Okay.”

We first met Luigi in the middle of a scramble.

During our Fall 2024 lookbook shoot, the male model we had locked in months ahead flaked the day before. Since the collection carried a strong salute to our Dominican heritage, we were stressed trying to figure out how to find someone in less than 24 hours who felt right, was Dominican, and was actually available. We reached out to our friends the "Fetti Bros," and they immediately suggested Luigi. They had worked with him before and said the same thing twice in different ways: he had the look, and he had real energy in person. That was enough for us.

We booked him to come to the studio and shoot alongside Lexa Gates, sight unseen. The second he arrived, it clicked. Luigi has the kind of presence that makes people relax without him having to force it. He reads a room naturally, moves with confidence, and brings a warmth that feels genuine. We spoke that day about how people from the islands seem to carry a certain fire toward life, a pull toward light, and it was something you could feel in him immediately.

After that shoot, we kept seeing him around, DJing parties across the city, then later in Paris during Fashion Week. Over time, he grew even closer to our world through our longtime collaborator Elijah Maura, and somewhere along the way he stopped feeling like someone adjacent to the brand and became a real friend of it.

What makes Luigi exciting is not just that he knows how to move a room. It is that he has been stepping further into himself with real intention, expanding from DJing into painting, sewing, textile work, digital media, styling, tattooing, and beyond. In conversation, all of it makes sense. Not because he presents a clean five-year plan, but because he understands that the dots only connect looking backward. Luigi is one of those people where, even now, you can already tell the story will make sense in hindsight. Ten years from now, people will look back and realize he was always headed somewhere bigger.

How would you describe what you do right now?

I still don’t even know what I would call it, for real. I use hand sewing, markers, drawing, all kinds of stuff. I make little stuffed animals, I make big ones, I paint, I DJ, I style, I’ve tattooed. So if I just say I’m a painter, that doesn’t really explain it. If I say I’m a DJ, that doesn’t explain it either. I think “artist” is the simplest answer, even if it sounds generic. I just create.

Do you feel like all of these different mediums are random, or do they connect for you?

They connect completely. Ten years ago I was already trying to do all of this at once. I was trying to teach myself how to tattoo, how to paint, how to draw, how to make something out of it. So now, even if it looks random from the outside, I know it’s not random. It actually makes perfect sense to me. I almost forgot that I was that kid already. Now I’m just seeing all of it come back around.

What made you lose sight of that for a while?

Other people’s fear. Their projections. Their expectations.

When I was younger I was more impressionable, so if somebody asked me, “How are you even supposed to make money off that?” and I didn’t have an answer, I would think, damn, maybe they’re right. Then I would stop and shift gears. Looking back, I wish I could grab that version of myself and tell him to focus and stop listening to all that noise. That’s really what I’m trying not to repeat now. I don’t want to look up ten years from now and realize I let the same fears make decisions for me again.

What kind of expectations were being put on you?

A lot of it comes from being first generation in America. When you’re the first one born here, the first one speaking English, the first one who is supposed to open the door wider for everyone else, there’s a lot of pressure. Your family sees you as the one who is supposed to become the doctor, the lawyer, the nurse, the one with the stable career, the one that proves it was all worth it.

And I get it. A lot of our families came from places where the concerns were survival. Food, money, water, housing, security. So to them, art is not a path, it’s a luxury. Music is just music. A painting is just something on a wall. They’re not thinking about the person behind it, or what it means to build a life around making things. They just want you safe.

How do you carry that pressure now?

I’m learning to laugh with it a little more. Not in a disrespectful way, but in a way where I’m embracing who I actually am.

I used to think maybe I was failing them because I wasn’t going to be the doctor cousin, the successful-on-paper son, the perfect example. But that just isn’t my path. I can’t force myself into a life that was never mine. I’m the art kid. That’s really it. I don’t fully know exactly where the path leads, but I know I can’t lie about what pulls me.

So what does guide you?

The things that make me want to stay up all night. The things that make me feel like I need to finish this, I want to finish this, I can’t wait to wake up and get back to it. That’s what guides me.

Whether it’s sewing, drawing, DJing, building something with my hands, all of it comes from that same feeling. I always felt compelled toward art and music. That’s the real compass. I don’t know if that sounds too simple, but that’s honestly it.

How did DJing change things for you?

DJing opened a lot of doors for me in ways I didn’t expect. I met so many people through it, and not just music people either. Art people, fashion people, people who think creatively in general. It all goes hand in hand.

Even before DJing, I was doing art. Before that, people knew me for tattooing. I’d tattoo myself, I’d tattoo the homies, I’d come to New York and tattoo people in Queens. There are still people who see me and think, “Nah, that’s Luigi the tattoo artist.” So it’s funny. You move into one chapter and people still know you from another one. But I’m grateful for all of it, because every version of that life brought me closer to the next one.

Your story growing up is not a simple one. What was your upbringing like?

It was really fragmented. Florida, College Point, DR. Back and forth. My twin sister and I were moving through all these different places early on, and when I look back on pictures now, I’m like, were we ever really in one household for long?

My mom was trying to survive and make something work in America. My dad wasn’t really in my life like that when I was very young. There was confusion around who my real father even was. Me and my sister found things out in messy ways. There was a lot of movement, a lot of adults trying their best, a lot of instability. So when I think about those years, it doesn’t feel linear. It feels like pieces.

How has your mother shaped the way you see life and work?

Completely.

My mom is one of the strongest people I know. She’s from a reality where survival came first, always. She doesn’t romanticize life. She never did. Since I was little she would burst any fantasy bubble immediately. Santa Claus? No, she bought the gifts. Life was always presented to us in a very real way.

I think seeing that shaped me deeply. It made me harder on myself, probably. But it also gave me a certain perspective. I understand that life is not promised to become something beautiful on its own. You have to make meaning out of it. You have to choose light.

That’s why I stay optimistic the way I do. Not because life is easy, but because I genuinely feel like the alternative is darkness. There are people who get so adjusted to the dark that they forget what light even looks like. I never want that.

You said something interesting about your people not always being your direct audience. What did you mean by that?

I’ve learned not to take everything so personally.

As a DJ, I might be playing at some inconvenient time in Brooklyn or Manhattan on a random night. Just because somebody doesn’t come doesn’t mean they don’t love me. It doesn’t mean they’re not supporting me. I think sometimes we put too much pressure on people to prove love in very specific ways, when everybody’s showing up however they can.

At the same time, I also believe in showing up. Even when you’re tired. Even when you don’t feel like leaving the house. There might be something waiting for you there. A conversation. A person. A moment that shifts something. So I try to stay open to that too. I’m naturally more introverted than people might think, but I’ve learned that a lot can happen when you push past your own resistance.

You also style people, sew, build objects, make images. What do you hope all of this becomes?

I would like for it to become a real world. A space. Something physical.

Not just for me, either. I think a lot about having a place where all of this can live together. Art, clothes, objects, photography, community. A place where people can come work on things, pull for shoots, do fittings, take pictures, maybe shop pieces from the homies, maybe discover something they didn’t know they needed. Something between a studio, a gallery, a store, and a creative home.

I don’t know exactly what the final form is yet, but I know I want it to be bigger than just me making things alone.

When you think about ten years from now, what does “figuring it out” actually look like?

It looks like my mom never having to work again.

That’s really a big part of it. Comfort. Stability. Being able to take care of the people who took care of me. And beyond that, I would want to have given something back. Everything I’ve been able to do came not just from me, but from the company I’ve kept, the people I’ve learned from, the people who believed in me. So if ten years from now I’ve built something meaningful and I’ve also been able to pour back into other people, then I think I’d feel good about that.

What would you say to the future version of yourself?

You’re doing a great job. Keep going. You figured it out.

And honestly, I hope by then I’ve kept proving one thing to myself over and over again: everything was always going to be okay.

As the conversation unfolded, it became clear that Luigi’s story is not really about choosing one lane. It is about trusting that the lane reveals itself through movement. What might look scattered from the outside feels connected once you hear him speak. The childhood instability, the first-generation pressure, the tattooing, the DJing, the sewing, the styling, the constant pull toward making something, all of it belongs to the same person and the same instinct.

There is a certain kind of artist who knows exactly what they are building from day one, and there is another kind who has to feel their way there in public. Luigi is the second type, and maybe that is what makes him compelling. He is not pretending to have the whole map. He is following the things that keep him up at night, the things that pull him toward light, and trusting that the meaning will reveal itself later. If this interview does become a time capsule, that may be the part that matters most. Even now, before the full picture has arrived, you can already see the outline of someone becoming exactly who they were meant to be.