Clothing for a cause

KNIK — There’s a unique fashion trend sweeping the nation, and some local moms are taking advantage of that to support two different kinds of recovery in the Mat-Su Valley.

This Saturday, two groups of LuLaRoe clothing consultants are hosting separate, community-wide “pop-up” boutiques to raise money for two causes: addiction recovery at Adult and Teen Challenge in Wasilla, and The Magic Yarn Project for children with cancer at the Palmer Depot.

LuLaRoe is a three-year-old clothing company run almost entirely by independent consultants like Wasilla resident Crystal Hite, a mother of three looking to provide for her family in a way that allows her to work from home.

While hosting a pop-up at her home on Saturday, Hite said she used to be a “silent bystander,” perusing her friend’s inventory of dresses, shirts, skirts and cardigans on Facebook. She was not interested in LuLaRoe’s most popular item — leggings, in just about every color and pattern imaginable — and she never dreamed of working in the fashion industry, she said, but she was curious.

Hite’s fiancé was, and still is, working in oil industry construction, and with the industry’s recent downturn, she wanted to be prepared to take on another job (in addition to parenting). Her original plan was to go to a midwifery school, and when her friend told her how much she could make with LuLaRoe, she figured she could pay her tuition with the money she made as a consultant.

“Then it just kind of took off, and I was like, ‘Wow, I can make some serious income, so maybe midwifery school will have to wait,’” she said.

That was at the end of last year. This summer, Hite attended the LuLaRoe consultant convention in California, where her fellow saleswomen and company executives showed her she was definitely onto something.