Tell your lead front dev this approach isn't best practice at all.
You want one collection li's to not have the style? Use an alternative class on the ul: "collection collection-alt".
You want nested li's to not inherit the styles? Use ".collection > li" in your CSS.
In any case, assigning a class on each li goes exactly against CSS best practices, because it prevents taking advantage of the inheritance of property values or of advanced selectors.
You want one collection li's to not have the style? Use an alternative class on the ul: "collection collection-alt".
You want nested li's to not inherit the styles? Use ".collection > li" in your CSS.
In any case, assigning a class on each li goes exactly against CSS best practices, because it prevents taking advantage of the inheritance of property values or of advanced selectors.