Currently * for Tuple{LatexString, AbstractString} goes through the default method for AbstractStrings, returning a String.
I wonder if it would make sense to define
Base.:*(a::LaTeXString, b::AbstractString) = latexstring(a, b)
and similarly for the reversed order.
The issue came up when I was constructing plot labels in a function, eg
latexstring(L"$\alpha$", " for men")
which is of course OK but * may be more compact.