Creatives

SEW NICE

Dara Sophia Romero reverted to her love of fashion after her career in the corporate world took a turn.

Dara Sophia Romero’s fashion designs are more than pretty dresses.

Fashion design favors the young and the formally trained.

So, at age 42 and with no degree from a top design school like Parsons School of

Design to draw from, Romero seemed like a hopeless cause. Instead of looking at the odds stacked against her, Romero embraced her circumstances, even naming her design house Hopeless + Cause

Atelier, and following principles that go beyond fancy clothes (though there are plenty of those, too).

Romero started sewing in fifth grade largely out of necessity. Her parents had divorced, and her cash-strapped mother didn’t have the money to buy Romero the latest fashions the middle-schooler coveted. If Romero wanted trendy clothing, she’d need to make it. Her grandmother taught her the craft of sewing and the art of fashion design.

Romero’s love for design stayed with her as she entered the corporate world, where she worked for decades in human resources and community relations. In 2013, she was laid off.

“I was at a crossroads part of my life. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next,” she remembers.

She returned to her early passion. Through connections at a local clothing boutique, Romero nabbed tickets to New York Fashion Week. The trip inspired her to invest in now-shuttered Duke City boutique, Runway Apparel, where she connected with fashionista customers who eventually became her design clients. When the boutique closed in 2015, she started working with friends such as Jennifer Riordan, an active participant in the city’s social and charity scenes whose death inspired the Jennifer Riordan Foundation.

“Hopeless + Cause Atelier was born in that time because I was feeling hopeless about my future,” Romero remembers.

Her custom creations appealed to women searching for one-of-a-kind looks. “A lot of my customers work with me because they’re looking for something they can’t find,” she says. “There’s a typical height and weight for models to be in runway or editorial. That’s not my customer.”

Her customers are everyday women. (Romero also works full time as a personal shopper at Macy’s where she helps customers find off-the-rack looks.) She believes that anyone who wants a beautiful dress should be able to have one.

Often, she’ll find recycled fabric, such as worn wedding dresses, to make her

designs more affordable. Upcycling also makes her designs more sustainable.

“It’s both out of necessity and inspiration,” she says. “Working in retail and fashion for so long, I hear about how much it does to damage the earth. One downside of fashion is the huge minimums you have to place. When I’m working to manufacture a certain look, I do manufacturing on demand. I don’t want to do any more damage to the environment.”

Her designs give back in another way, too: She donates 10% of the cost of each item to the nonprofit organization of the customer’s choice. Her business has donated to the likes of Albuquerque Healthcare for the Homeless, All Faith’s Children’s Advocacy Center, and Children’s Grief Center of New Mexico.

The custom-design process begins with meeting her client to take measurements and discover their needs.

“If they’ve found a design they want me to re-create, I say ‘no,’” she explains. “Instead, I ask what they like about the look and create from there. I ask what they like about their body and want to highlight, and what they want to disguise.”

The process usually takes four to six weeks.

“I like simple designs. They’re demure with unexpected elements,” she says. “I’ll do a simple A-line dress but add embroidered sheer sleeves or a plunging back. I’ll pair a midi skirt with a crop top with a lace back. I play with my color palette.”

Audrey Hepburn and rock singer-songwriter Courtney Love inspire her equally. “Audrey Hepburn is a style icon to me, but I love how wild Courtney Love is. I pull from both.”

Her designs have appeared far beyond the informal catwalks of local events such as Dîner en Blanc. She’s presented collections at The SOCIETY Fashion Weeks during Los Angeles Fashion Week, New York Fashion Week, and San Francisco Fashion Week. The pandemic sidelined her plans to show in Paris in 2020. However, she hopes that will happen in 2022. Her designs have also appeared in the pages of British Vogue, Vanity Fair UK, and British GQ, among others.

In 2020, she auditioned and was in the late stages of casting for TV fashion design show Project Runway, on which fellow New Mexico designer Patricia Michaels appeared. However, the pandemic temporarily waylaid those plans, too.

Romero took a hiatus from design in 2021 after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “I needed to focus on my health,” she says. An invitation to design looks for an Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce fashion show in October offered the push she needed to get back into the game.

“It’s the hardest space when you can’t feel those juices going,” she says of trying to pick up her creative process amid surgeries and radiation treatments.

Her grandmother, who taught her to sew, inspired the inspiration she needed to fashion four simple, flowy looks with black, white, and red. “Often inspiration comes from what’s happening to me personally,” she says. Now 48, she hopes her story motivates others.

“If people have a burning passion but the fire went out, I hope they feel inspired. You can achieve your dreams at any age.” —