He learned to sew in Baltimore. Now he’s dressed everyone from Usher to the Royal Ballet.

Dante Baylor was home in Harlem, ready to call it a night, when he got a call from a friend in dire need of his help last October.

She was tailoring an outfit for R&B legend Mary J. Blige and needed someone to dress Usher for the Studio Museum Gala in Harlem because she couldn’t do both jobs at once, he recalled. And the star-studded event was starting soon.

So the Baltimore native, 41, threw some clothes on and went straight to Usher’s hotel room. That night marked one of many in Baylor’s career as a celebrity tailor and clothing designer. More importantly, it represents how far he has risen from his start designing costumes and performing in Baltimore.

Upon arriving, Usher shook Baylor’s hand and gave him a quick look before staring a little longer.

“Haven’t we met before?” he remembered Usher asking.

“We’ve never met before,” Baylor quickly responded. But Usher continued, insisting that they had crossed paths before.

“‘Can you please just put these pants on — we don’t have time to be chatting it up,’” Baylor said he thought, hustling to hem Usher’s pants, take in the waist on his trousers and rig his dress shirt with little time to spare.

Hours later, Usher was dressed to the nines in a black velvet sports coat and pristine white button-down tucked neatly into his tailored suit pants.

When Baylor recounted the experience to his partner later that night, he realized that he might have accidentally gaslit Usher. The two had in fact met before, some two years prior, backstage at an Alvin Ailey show. He had simply forgotten.

From Baltimore to beyond

Baylor grew up in Baltimore, the son of a law enforcement officer and a dance teacher at Forest Park High School.

Watching his stepmother dance in operas and rave over the artistic work of Alvin Ailey performances was his first exposure to the arts. Growing up, he was always in the theater. Sometimes watching others on stage. Other times performing himself.

Being gay, he felt safe in few places in Baltimore. But the theater was one.

“There was something that was very comforting when the lights would go down,” he said. “It always felt almost like this kind of cocoon experience, or like being wrapped in a warm blanket.”

The only other refuge Baylor felt he had was his high school, the Baltimore School for the Arts — a place he said taught him the discipline and skills he needed to be a “successful Black man.”

He entered the school intending to become an actor, but left immersed in more: stage production, illustration, costume design and crafts.

Norah Worthington, a 33-year BSFA teacher who taught Baylor, said that he was always “electrically charged” with ideas and that watching him express that was “joyous.”

She vividly recalled an 8-inch wooden mannequin he dressed with a wig and beaded belt after a field trip to the Walters Art Museum.

“It was so beautiful,” she said. “Everything about it was so crafted.”

That mannequin stands on a shelf in her classroom today, serving as a source of inspiration and example of craftsmanship for students.

Production and bringing a stage to life was Baylor’s first love, he said. Then he sat in front of a sewing machine that looked like it was from the Victorian era.

That moment sparked something in Baylor — something that would take him from designing costumes for the annual “Nutcracker” performance to attending the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and later designing and tailoring clothing for celebrities, premier theater companies and brands.

Baby Phat, Queen Latifah, Brandi Carlile, the Royal Ballet, Rachel Brosnahan, Machine Gun Kelly and the New York City Ballet, to name a few. And he just finished tailoring clothing for a Pandora jewelry campaign that features Olandria Carthen, the “Love Island USA” star and model.

While Baylor loved Baltimore, he knew there was more out there for him. He chased that feeling and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

“I always felt like I was kind of a big fish in a small pond,” he said.

But ultimately, the company of the renowned dancer his mother fawned over is where his career has taken refuge: the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Baylor, connected with the dance company through a former colleague, now traverses the globe with the company, preparing theaters, dancers and costumes for performances, and occasionally dropping in to his former high school to make costumes for student performances.

When Worthington attended a local Ailey show, she said she could see Baylor’s craftsmanship in it, specifically his “unique interpretation of shapes.”

For Baylor, Alvin Ailey’s theater is significant because in an industry that often lacks diversity, his work explores themes of homelessness, colorism, domestic abuse and the African American diaspora with dancers from different backgrounds.

“Who cares what Kim Kardashian is wearing to the Met Gala when there are people literally starving on the streets in front of the museum?” he said. “The one thing that I can reconcile with the work that I do for Alvin Ailey is that we try to present work that has some integrity, that has a conversation about what’s happening in the world.”