Mr. Lars checked all the right boxes to create Carissima, Anthropologie’s layered best seller. It is a clever feat of creativity, featuring lace and 13 different polyester fabrics, resulting in a luxurious cocktail dress that stands out on a cellphone screen. Mr. Lars tailored the sheath with a front panel, giving women up to size 22 an hourglass silhouette.

“It’s the perfect dress,” said Maggie Schuler, the executive director of accessories at Anthropologie. Carissima tallied 682 customer reviews, with a near-perfect five-star rating from gushing fans, including brides and partygoers, who posted selfies with their reviews.

To achieve textured sheerness, Mr. Lars created a layered illusion he calls “egalitarian nude” to be flattering to every skin color.

“It’s not ‘Black girl nude’ or a ‘white girl nude,’” he said. “It’s a rosy hue covered with a taupe layer of net, so that the light doesn’t hit it directly. There’s a play of shadows that greens it out into an olive tone that is harmonious with every skin color — from white to brown. I played forever to get that nude right. Only a Black designer would go the extra mile. It always offended me to see Black women with a nude lining but only looked nude if you were fair and white.”

Mr. Lars’s tenacious, stay-relevant strategies over the years serve as a lesson to aspiring designers of any race, who can no longer rely on wholesale orders from the ever shrinking department store sector. The most resilient fashion houses of the future are likely to be small and specific — a throwback to when fashion designers were small, independent businesses whose loyal clients paid a fair price for beautiful clothes that made them look and feel special.

“He just may be the new template for how fashion is done, “ Mr. Burke said.

Source: New York Times

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