Designer LaQuan Smith on overcoming lockdown challenges and industry tokenism

The ongoing demand for LaQuan Smith's signature sexy designs is both a blessing and a curse, as he put it on the Glossy Podcast. "It was a very humbling experience, because I had to find alternative ways to still be able to produce these orders," Smith said. "Thankful they didn't get dropped, but also, damn, because I'm now in a compromised position: How do I get these done, how do I fulfill all these orders on time?" Smith pulled it off by having his cutters work from home while "packing and shipping from my living room," he said. To him, the fact that his designs are in demand despite a pandemic gives him further confidence in his self-named brand, which he said faced significant doubts when it debuted in 2013. But he said he's recently faced tokenism, whereby his achievements as a designer have been flattened by his grouping with other Black designers. "You can't group me with [someone] who just started designing three months ago on Instagram. That's not fair," Smith said, referring to the lists of Black designers to support, that have recently surfaced across media channels. "They're putting all these Black designers in one box. To me, this is not the way you do that. If you want to really celebrate designers of color, you do it the right way."