Carlos Nazario – 12 Months.14 Covers.

The fashion industry can’t seem to get enough of Carlos Nazario.

- By Emilia Petrarca

Growing up in Queens, Carlos Nazario had two wardrobes: Sean John jeans paired with Jordans or Timbs for day and miniskirts with thigh-high Converse boots for night. Most weekends, he’d sneak out and take a two-fare trip into the city to clubs like Happy Valley and Splash, or to Warehouse in the Bronx, where your outfit could make your evening. His looks were paid for, in part, with money he made Photoshopping his peers’ report cards (and doctors’ notes and gym slips), although sometimes he’d swap and borrow clothes with the friends he made on the scene—people like Shayne Oliver, who later started Hood by Air and who made Nazario seem conservative by comparison. “The styles were wild,” Nazario said. “You could just tell that everyone woke up at 2 p.m., ran a few errands and then from 7 p.m. on, it was all about getting dressed.”

It was a snowy morning in early February, and the 32-year-old stylist was reminiscing at his desk in his Tribeca studio. He wore his signature black Yankees baseball cap, a vintage dark-blue Jil Sander sweater, Supreme jeans he’s had since he was 20, and black leather Prada Wallabees—the designer version of a classic New York shoe. With his cute smile and gentle demeanor, it was hard to imagine him operating a racket for fake grades. On the wall hung a large photograph of his grandmother Efna. Last year, when Italian Vogue asked him to style 100 women in Prada for 100 versions of its September cover, he put her on the list.