“She’s still very precise, but there’s complexity to her. She’ll show you what she wants to show you, it’s self-authored.”
So said Rachel Scott, who is focused on who the women of Proenza Schouler are now under her purview as creative director.
It’s not hyperbole to say that Scott’s formal debut at Proenza was the most anticipated show of the week. Until now there have been hints of the journey she wants to take the customer on, since the September show had bits of her touch and a new ad campaign recently launched, themed around authenticity. Scott candidly shared that she’s been meticulous in studying the brand and its codes, naming color, its connection to art, tailoring and craft. Founders Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough love women — she is clear about that. But, being a woman, she brings a different nuance to the brand. “I find perfectionism a bit of a prison,“ she said a day before her debut, contrasting the idea of idolizing a woman versus being one.
“I’m really attracted to texture,” she explained of her design language. “So even though things will look clean, when you get close, there’s like a little something for the woman.”
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Look One — a blue-hued dress with a bell shape at the waist — pushed the point. It was made of a double-faced wool fabric with a multispeckled yarn in green and blue with a hint of black, and was light and buoyant. The outfit glided past the audience, which included fellow New York designers Christopher John Rodgers, Maria Cornejo, Veronica Leoni and Raul Lopez, who all came out to cheer her on.
The shape was revisited throughout the lineup, for instance, presented as a peplum on a sandy-hued denim jacket and suiting. There was a pulsating tension between hand and machine, like her orchid prints, photographed first, painted on top and then digitized on dresses with fringe and separates, recapturing that effortlessly cool Proenza Schouler woman with new ideas for today. Craft can sometimes be an overused word in fashion circles, but here Scott showed her hand is impactful, purposeful and decidedly female.
While immersing herself in the brand, she attended a dinner with a few of its top customers, diligently taking in their feedback. “I asked everyone what their favorite pieces were,” she said. While the response varied, tailoring was important, with the group offering specific feedback on how the shoulder and armhole were placed “so she felt really in it and powerful.” She took the notes and carried them through tailoring ideas with skirt suits and a remix of the brand’s popular sailor pant, here with buttons askew. A houndstooth plaid was made from chenille check details, adding more texture to the touch on a trench with a leather base.
The Proenza DNA was baked in with a few details from the founders’ early work, like grommets with a new strictness on topcoats. The footwear took previous styles and updated them, such as a fuzzy sole heel with strappy leather laces, while others went mannish with loafers with elongated bulbous toe boxes. And, of course, the brand built on the legacy PS1 handbag with strong new propositions, including bowler bags with hand-painted orchids, supple totes and a bucket bag with strips of hair calf and suede, a nod to one of the first shapes the brand launched in the category.
The last two looks were a full proposition of what Scott — who won a CFDA Award for womenswear in 2024, the first Black female designer to do so — can do with floral print dresses with asymmetric handkerchief hems and bits of fringe and grommets, everything layered together in a modern way. It cemented a strong thesis on how today’s woman, particularly in global urban centers, likes to dress.