Everything you need to know about Rachel Scott, the new creative director at Proenza Schouler Her debut is one of the most anticipated of February's New York Fashion Week.
With September just begun, the fashion industry has already returned to reshuffling the top ranks of international creative direction. One of the last brands left without a designer was Proenza Schouler, a New York label founded by Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who will now take on the creative direction of Loewe, after Jonathan Anderson. After months of searching, the two designers—who still sit on Proenza’s board—have finally found their successor: Rachel Scott. The designer, founder of the brand Diotima, will present her first collection for Proenza Schouler during New York Fashion Week in February, but we won’t have to wait long to see how she will reshape the brand’s creative direction, since the SS26 collection presented this September will be signed by Scott together with Proenza’s design studio.
Jamaican-born, class of 1984, Rachel Scott first approached the fashion world during her studies at the Istituto Marangoni. Observing the relationship between language, culture, and creativity, Scott began exploring design as an aesthetic, intellectual, and bodily medium. She worked as a designer, consultant, and executive both in Milan and New York, and founded Diotima in 2021. Her résumé includes past work as assistant designer at Costume National in Milan, J.Mendel in New York, Elizabeth & James (a lifestyle brand curated by Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen), and Rachel Comey.
With Diotima, Rachel Scott has won two CFDA Fashion Awards (in 2023 as Emerging Designer of the Year and in 2024 as Womenswear Designer of the Year), was a finalist for the LVMH Prize in 2023 and for the Woolmark Prize this year. The founder’s Jamaican roots play a key role in Diotima’s artistic direction, which, through crochet work, fully expresses the culture and craftsmanship of the Caribbean country, where all of the brand’s creations are produced. Diotima’s collections are «year-round and seasonally interchangeable», with the goal of «amplifying artisanal communities in Jamaica». Diotima’s tailoring, instead, is crafted with traditional tweeds from the UK, while the wools come from renowned Italian mills.
Proenza Schouler was instead founded in 2002 during the fashion design studies of its two founders, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, at the Parsons School of Design. The brand’s name corresponds to their mothers’ maiden names, and was first used for the thesis collection they created together. Once presented, the collection was purchased in its entirety by the New York luxury retailer Barneys (now closed). In 23 years, the brand has won five CFDA Awards, the Swarovski Award in 2003, the Accessory Designer of the Year Award in 2009, and the Womenswear Designer of the Year Award in 2007, 2011, and 2013.
