The Best and Brightest - NYTimes.com IT'S the fashion equivalent of a Lotto hit. A single item from a designer's collection catches the public's fancy and blows up. There is a sound of rejoicing along Seventh Avenue as cash registers go ka-ching. Well, cash registers are now mainly digital and hushed, but you get the idea. Think, historically, of Claire McCardell's 1942 Popover dress for Townley Frocks, a $6.95 garment that flew out of stores and into history, collected by museums that celebrate it as a crisp utilitarian emblem of a new generation of working women. Think of Tory Burch's ballerina flats, which not only made that designer a household name but also even richer than she already was. Think of the Fendi Baguette, a handbag created by Silvia Venturini Fendi in complete opposition to the design brief she had been handed, which was such a runaway success that, despite costing thousands, it sold many thousands and put that venerable house squarely back on the map of fashion relevance. The Fendi Baguette is celebrated, if that's the word, in a new coffee table monograph from Rizzoli that is as ponderous and weighty as a tombstone. While breakout hits come along less often in men's wear, they certainly occur. Ask Italo Zucchelli, the designer for Calvin Klein. About a third of the way into his spring 2009 show, an unusual mood of excitement took hold of the crowd. "We had this fluorescent yellow sweater, and people started mumbling," Mr. Zucchelli recalled. Then we sent out AJ Abualrub, with his ash-gray hair, in a full-on yellow suit, and people really started clapping. Shortly after, the same young model came out in a neon red suit, and the assembled editors and buyers let out a cheer. "It's unusual that they scream anywhere," the designer said. Maybe they used to clap in the 1980s at a Thierry Mugler show, but that was a spectacle. It was a moment, what can I say? Standing backstage, Mr. Zucchelli turned to members of his public relations team to say they had better run up extra samples double time. "I knew it was going to be on the cover of a lot of magazines, and it was," he said. What I didn't think was that a lot of people would be so open to wearing it. In women's fashion, the magazine-ready stunt garment that real people will never wear is termed a "press dress." Mr. Zucchelli's assumption was that few real men could pull off a neon red suit, and yet against common sense and the advice of his team ("My design assistant kept telling me, "It's not chic," he said), he had pursued his vision after coming across a neon neoprene wet suit in a Los Angeles vintage store. To his surprise, customers loved the design. They loved it so much that one man went into Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and refused to leave until the store sold him the sole sample in stock, which was on a mannequin. "It made me understand that men like color," Mr. Zucchelli said. People also told me that this color has a euphoric effect on your retina and mood. It had a happy-making effect, too, on the bottom line. The neon suits sold out at Calvin Klein stores (which offered the jackets and trousers separately) and, insiders said, at retailers like Saks. So despite the current dinning chorus of economic doomsayers and the announcement that the opening of Milan Fashion Week will coincide with a national workers strike, Mr. Zucchelli pronounced himself optimistic. And isn't it in the "Save the Tiger"" nature of the business to believe that with every new show and every new season, lightning might strike? "Last season it was the simple shoes with a sole made of transparent rubber, and we are not even a house that is famous for accessories," he said. That shoe was such a big wow that I had to call the makers of these things and force them to produce more pairs. The designer gave a wry smile and shrugged: "You cannot predict."