The first time Lizzo’s team contacted Houston-based fashion designer Rubén Isaza to ask him if he could make a performance outfit for the R&B artist, he had to turn down the request. Her team wanted a three-day turnaround,
and Isaza didn’t want to commit to something he wasn’t sure he would be able to pull off. When her team reached out a second time for an outfit for a music festival in New Orleans, Isaza said yes. Although he was nervous due to the time constraints, his fears ended up being unwarranted. “I created the outfit in one day, and then I had to go to New Orleans the next day to deliver it and fit it to her,” Isaza says. “Everything worked, and I just had to do some small alterations.”

He’s gone on to design five other outfits for Lizzo, including the one she wore when she went viral for dancing in the audience at a Beyoncé concert, as well as the bubblegum-pink Sailor Moon–inspired getup the artist wore while on tour in Japan. “She is my favorite celebrity customer to design for,” Isaza says. “She’s always open to whatever I want to design.”

Isaza’s celebrity clients now also include legendary Mexican pop group RBD, who are currently wrapping up a reunion tour. So far, he’s designed 20 performance outfits for the band, with several more in the works. It’s been a blockbuster year for Isaza, and he’s grateful for how far he’s come since moving here from his native Venezuela in 2016 on the hunt for better opportunities.

When Isaza first arrived in Houston, he lived with his aunt in Katy and worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant. His aunt, who has always been a huge supporter of his fashion dreams, bought him his first sewing machine stateside, and Isaza started using it to create gowns during his time off. Thanks to social media, his designs quickly caught the attention of local fashion industry professionals, and about six months after immigrating here Isaza had his first fashion show.

“I would be doing the dishes in the back of the restaurant and then the next day I would have a fashion show,” Isaza says. “Everything happened so fast. People would contact me thinking I was a big professional even though I was just starting out.”

By 2019, he had established himself enough as a designer to quit his side jobs and make fashion his full-time gig. Isaza says that entertainers love working with him because of his novel approach to designing performance outfits. While many designers stick with stretchy materials, which are more forgiving, he likes to work with materials like denim, pleather, leather, and vinyl, which allow him to give a body whatever shape he wants instead of letting the body dictate the design.

In addition to his work with big-name celebrity performers, Isaza’s designs have made it on television through an appearance on Fuse TV’s Upcycle Nation and the latest season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, for which he designed several of the outfits for Houston contestant Mistress Isabelle Brooks. But he doesn’t always say yes, and occasionally passes up big opportunities in which he would have to cede too much creative control.

“I prefer to work on things that I’m inspired by,” he says. “I don’t care how much money you have. If I’m going to design something for you, it’s because
I really want to design it.”