Rachel Scott Is the Busiest Woman at New York Fashion Week

0:00I'm Chloe Mel, and I am so excited to tell you all about the spring issue of Vogue, my first as head of editorial content. It is full of so many examples of what Vogue does best. There is a spectacularly romantic cover shoot with Rosalia, a beautiful and moving remembrance of Valentino Garavani by Hamish Bowles, the quest for the perfect pillow with a beautiful oil painting illustration inspired by the Simone Rocha runway show, a tribute to Shoes That Pack a Punch starring some of our favorite staff doges. It's an issue I'm so proud of. I'm so excited for everyone to see it and to touch it and hold it and keep it.

0:41And if you're not already a subscriber, this is the moment to join. You can get unlimited access at Vogue.com slash Spring Issue.

0:55This is The Run Through. I'm Nicole Phelps. I'm here with Rachel Scott today, the founder of Diatima and the new creative director of Prenza Schooler. And I'm so excited to be talking with you. I'm excited to talk with you, Nicole. Thanks for having me. We were talking in our editorial meeting before Fashion Week, and we decided you were the busiest woman in New York fashion. How do you feel after two shows in five days? I feel really happy. Yeah, I feel really happy and extremely exhausted. But I feel like I just, there was a lot of my soul that I poured out in one week. It was really, it was a very, very intense week.

1:36I'd say it's the hardest thing I've ever done. You started the week, your Prenza Schooler show, which was your debut there, opened New York Fashion Week. And I was very impressed. And I'm very glad that I went to the showroom to see these clothes up close. The materiality of them, the way the skirt suits were actually knit. all the different treatments that went into the two different denim jackets and jeans. And talk about your mission. You know, it was your opening salva. What did you want to accomplish with this Prenza Schooler show? You know, it's hard. It's like it's almost impossible to achieve everything I'd like to achieve in one collection because it's a resetting and it's laying foundations for a new path because, you know, the brand has been around almost 25 years.

2:26but it's almost like a new brand. It has to be because, you know, Jack and Lazar aren't there anymore. And so I think I wanted to find just, I don't know, maybe just beginning vocabulary for what I can do there. I think the most important thing was thinking about the woman. I think that took a lot of just research and meeting with customers and learning about the customer over the entirety of the brand and trying to think how I could bring her forward with me without isolating her, but maybe offering a different perspective. But I'm super textural, and I needed to find a way to bring that through in a subtle way and not be as maximalist as I am with Diatima, but still have my language of materiality.

3:13And I think that my approach to color, you know, they use color in such a bold way, and, you know, there's, like, primary colors, and it's almost like true colors. They would use red, and it's red, and they'd use green, and it's green. And I think I have a different approach to color. I love color, but it's just, it's a little bit more, there is more offness to it. There is a little bit of nuance to the colors I do choose. And so I wanted to find a way to add my, you know, a little bit of complexity to the color. So and also just exploring the life of this woman and what the life of a New York woman is like and kind of designing outside of the idea of dressing specific dressing context.

3:57So I think it was all these things I wanted to find, you know, a starting point. And I'm excited to keep building. I was excited to see Maria Cornejo and Veronica Leone of Calvin Klein and Raul Lopez of Loire at the show. And, you know, really it was not officially, but, you know, you haven't done a lot of show shows because at Diotima for several years you were doing presentations. So did they give you any advice? Do you go to your fellow designers and ask them for tips as you prepare? Not about shows. Maybe I should have done that. No, it's more just, I'm really lucky to have these incredible designers who have paved the way, who just talk to me more about how to preserve your energy and how to hold on to the things you believe in.

4:50And I think that a show is a show. And at the end of the day, it's really about it going out into the world and how that exists and also feeling that you say the things that you want to say. So I think, you know, in terms of the show, they didn't really have advice. I'll ask the next time. But I think they were just there to support on the level of friendship. I think it can be extremely isolating to be in this position. And because you work so much and because you're under, you know, everyone is ready to criticize. And I appreciate criticism and I appreciate, like, feedback. But it's also a very emotional process.

5:31You know, it is a business. It's not art in the same way of being creative. But it is, you know, you do bare your soul in these moments. And I think the people that came have all experienced being in this world where you're really in front of everyone's eyes in a way that I haven't. And I think they were there to just support. And that was really nice. What about Jack and Lazaro? Obviously, they are in Paris now working on Lueve. Did they have any feedback from the show or did you talk to them beforehand? I spoke with them a little beforehand. And they said, you know, they were very encouraging.

6:05They said, I think Lazaro said, you're going to smash it. And then after the show, they both sent really lovely, sweet messages and sent me flowers as well, which was really nice. And, of course, they're busy preparing for their show, so they couldn't come. But I felt their presence there, so that was really nice. All right. And then four days later, that was Wednesday, and then Sunday morning you are putting on a Diatima show. It's the second Diatima show you've done and a very special one because you got to collaborate with the estate of an artist who's really important to you. Will you tell us who that is?

6:41Yeah, I did a collaboration with the estate of Wilfredo Lam, which I still can't believe because he is a major 20th century artist. There's a retrospective of his work, the largest U.S. retrospective of his work at the MoMA currently. the fact that they even allowed me to do this you know it's a it's very serious work and you know I think that the art world doesn't necessarily think that fashion is as serious as ours is so it was a risk for them to take especially because of the timing of it all I approached the state just on a whim not knowing about the retrospective in October and I was met with openness, but curiosity.

7:21And I met with Eskil, with Fredo's son, who manages, largely manages the estate with his brothers. And I think we had a really nice connection in meeting. And he said to me, you know, I don't know anything about fashion, so I have no idea what it is that you intend to do. But so I can't say yes until I see something, but I'm curious. And so I put together a presentation, sent it to them at the end of November. And he kept saying that he was really impressed with what I did and that he wanted it to happen. And, you know, he wanted it to happen. Gallery Gumurdzinska wanted it to happen. And also the MoMA was excited about it happening at the same time as the retrospective, which comes down in April.

8:07And so everyone held hands legal and to push it through. And all of my manufacturers and my collaborators, we all, Everyone just believed in it because it should not have happened so quickly. It should have taken at least a year, if not a year and a half, even just for the legal for this to happen. So, yeah, it was a very, very special moment. And I think this also comes an extremely terrifying political moment in the U.S. with ICE, with our president, and also in the region with what's happening with Venezuela and with Cuba. You know, the just reinvigorated pressure on Cuba. And so I just felt like I almost had no choice.

8:48This had to be done in this moment. Tell us, for people who don't know Wilfredo Lam's work, what drew you to it? And how, you know, how do you define what he was doing? Yeah, so Wilfredo was an artist from Cuba. He passed away in 1982. And he was a contemporary and a friend and collaborator of Pablo Picasso. of Aimé Césaire. So he really came about, or his work kind of developed in the moments of surrealism. He is a modernist. He's a surrealist, but he's more than that. His work is a bit undefinable. He was a painter and also ceramicist near the end of his work, but his work was really grounded.

9:28It was anti-imperialist, and he spent time in Europe, went back to Cuba during the war, and then ended up settling in Europe at the end. But, you know, where Picasso looked at African sculpture and saw Cubism, Wefredo looked at the work and saw the people. And he really found a way to represent, you know, the descendants of African slaves in the Caribbean in a way that they'd never been represented. And the work has a lot of political force, but it's also incredibly, incredibly beautiful work. And it's very layered. He's probably one of the most important artists of the last century. And I think because he's Cuban, I think he doesn't get the recognition that he should.

10:13So I'm really happy that the MoMA has this retrospective. And I think because of that, that was maybe the only reason that the state was open to me working with it, because his work deserves more visibility. And so using these canvases as inspiration for your work, there's this idea that you're imbuing your own clothes with some of that political force. You are sending your own message with a collection. And what is that message? I mean, ice out. Number one, we need to really think about what borders are. We need to think about autonomy of people of the Caribbean, people across the world that have been dominated.

11:00I think it's a statement against repressive forces and domination and colonialism and imperialism. That's what it is. We need to – it's just – and what's the most scary is that what we're seeing right now is not new. It's a resurgence of really awful, very, very, you know, fascist right-wing things that have happened in the past that I thought that we would have all learned from. But it's the resurgence is stronger than ever, and we have to fight against it. Well, I wrote that it felt like one of New York Fashion Week's rare political statements. And, you know, our colleague at Vanity Fair, Jose Criola-Sanzueta, said that you gave New York Fashion Week its backbone, which I really liked.

11:44do you believe that fashion can be a tool for resisting injustice? I think it has to be. I think anything that operates in the realm of culture, you have a massive audience, and people maybe don't want to engage with politics, but they want to engage with something beautiful or something that they think is escapist because of how scary the politics are. But if you have any form of platform, you need to use that. I think it's, especially when it's related to culture, I think culture without any knowledge or, I don't know, any form of referencing to what's happening is actually a political statement in itself.

12:25I think it's a political statement of ignorance. So you have to speak through fashion in some way. And it doesn't have to always be so vocal and so loud. It can also be in the practices that, you know, you keep as a brand. But every decision is political. There is no such thing as being apolitical. That is a political choice. Well, speaking of practices, for the first time you worked with an organization called Refugee Atelier, correct? Can you tell us what that is? Yeah. I worked with Refugee Atelier, which is a nonprofit organization organized by Rupa Pemiraju, and it's based here in New York.

13:02And she organizes refugees, all women, who are here in New York and have incredible skills and are trying to find their footing. And so I worked with them to do crochet, but they have all different forms of skill sets within garment making. Yeah, I worked with one woman very closely, Jocelyn, who's from Mexico, and she's 28. And I find that remarkable because not a lot of young people actually know how to do crochet. So I thought that was really special to work closely with her. And I think it was really important to work with refugees in this moment. Before that, I had only worked with crochet artisans in Jamaica, which was important to me for that reason as well.

13:38But it was nice to be able to expand this practice of making with people here in a moment where refugees are being accosted. Are there role models for you in terms of fellow designers who are doing this kind of or any kind of sort of political work? Yeah, I mean, I think there are a few of us, you know, Willie, for example, Willie Chavaria, his shows are really, really poesic and beautiful and have a very strong message. I remember the show he did. It was last January, Men's Fashion Week in Paris. I mean, and then he played Bishop Budde's Speech at the end of it. That was a really strong and beautiful and emotional show.

14:24I think he thinks about this. I think Raul Lopez from Loire does this as well. I think that other designers like Maria, you know, she's very political, and I think she's always stood with an independent voice in this industry and for a long time. And even also Rachel, Rachel Comey, my previous boss, I think that she's always worked outside of, you know, the expectations of what you should do as a fashion brand. And I've had some really great role models for this.

14:56We're going to take a quick break.

15:08Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford, senior awards correspondent at Vanity Fair and co-host of Little Gold Men. Oscar season is upon us. Little Gold Men takes you behind the scenes of the race for the biggest prize in Hollywood. There's a hundred wrestlers in the room, but only one can be Oscar nominated. Whether you're a movie lover or an industry buff, Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair has everything you need to know about this year's Oscar race. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

15:44Well, let's go back. You mentioned Jamaica. You're working with Jamaican artisans since the launch of Diatima. You grew up there. And as I understand it, You spent a lot of time in your mom's boutique in Kingston as a child. Is that what sort of triggered your interest in making clothes? We argue about this all the time. My mother says it's because of her, and she's probably right. I don't know why I got into fashion. So my father, my mother had a boutique, and she sold it recently. My father was a furniture designer. And I think when I was younger, you know, I'm like such a daddy's girl. So I wanted to do furniture design and interior design.

16:25So he got me lots of internships with his friends who were architects or interior designers when I was like, I don't know, 13 or 14. And I worked in my mother's boutique as well. And I always said to them I would never start my own business because I saw how hard it was for them. But then, you know, Jamaica is a very strong party culture. And so I needed clothes to wear to party. So I started making things to go out. And my mother wasn't the kind, you know, there weren't like shops or malls or things like that in Jamaica. So people would often go to Miami and shop. And my mother didn't believe in that.

16:59So she would be like, you know, go down to Halfway Tree, which is this area downtown Kingston, and go to the fabric shops and figure this out yourself. And so I think she definitely was the one that pushed me into this. And then I kept buying magazines from this one store near my house, and they had Vogue's, and they had Italian Vogue's, and I became very obsessed with that. And at that point, maybe I was 16, I decided I wanted to do fashion. And so I think it was a combination of the fact that my father was a maker, and my mother had, you know, a fun wardrobe herself and had this store. And I think both of them and just this atmosphere of thinking that creativity was a viable career path because in Jamaica, it can be quite traditional.

17:42You know, it's, you know, you become a doctor, a lawyer or a business person. You don't go after arts or fashion or things, flippant things like that. So I think both of them really fostered this understanding that you can do something creative, just do it to the best of your ability and try and be successful. So you're a teenager and you're making your own clothes. Paint a picture of what you looked like in high school. It was Jamaica, so you have to keep that in mind. So the clothes were very small. I used to make these skirts, which are really funny because I guess I do something similar. So I used to make these skirts with a yoke in Jersey, like hot pink Jersey.

18:21So I would have a hip yoke and then a flounce skirt. But I mean, the skirt was maybe in total 14 inches long or 13 inches long. and then little tops that were, it was that time where you'd make those triangle tops and it would lace up the back. So I had lots of those and it was always bright colors. It was like hot pink, really, really hot pink. I think I have a thing for fluorescent colors. It might just be my age or it would be like lime green or whatever it was, but it was always really tiny and it was always a skirt because it was much easier to make than shorts and a little top of some form.

18:55And then you went to college at Colgate. I went to Colgate. In the middle of ice cold New York State. Wow. What a transition. Really big transition. I wanted to, you know, even though I knew I wanted to be a designer, I really wanted to get as full of an education as possible because I knew this was an opportunity to get to study and I got a scholarship. and, you know, it was kind of like wherever gave me the biggest scholarship, that was where I was going to go. I really wanted to go to NYU. I had this really, you know, this grand idea that I was going to live in New York. And, but I got into Colgate with a great scholarship and it was a really good education.

19:38I, they didn't have a fashion program, obviously, it's a liberal arts school, but I studied French, although I don't really speak French now, and arts because I wanted that kind of practice and grounding in my work. And I had really great teachers and met my best friend who now still works with me, Shaneli. And yeah, it was an incredible experience. And before you worked for Rachel Comey, you were in Milan for a time, correct? Yeah. So after Colgate, I mean, I was doing summer programs while I was at Colgate to try and build some form of foundation. So I did a summer at FIT, nighttime classes at FIT.

20:21And in the daytime, I was interning at Vogue. Four Times Square. Four Times Square. And then I did a summer at CSM, and I interned a bridal designer. After that, I really wanted to go to Antwerp. So after I graduated, I went to Antwerp in the summer with Janine. We were going to study together and took the entrance exam, which is a really intense like multiple day exam where you do like life drawing you do a little project and while I was there I like was talking with some of the other people that were taking the exam and they told me like oh this is my second year here this is my fifth year here trying to get in hopefully I make it this year and I didn't get in but I just there was no way I was going to be able to do that multiple years in a row so I didn't get in so I applied to Marangoni, Instituto Marangoni, and got into the, there was a course that they had that was like a, it's not quite postgraduate, but it was like, if you'd had some kind of undergraduate education, a one-year intensive course.

21:24And it was in English, even though it was in Milan, it was in English because it was too short of a course to, you know, learn Italian and then do that as well. And then after that one-year program, I got an internship at Costume and And I think only because I spoke English, because my boss at the time was from Denmark, and she spoke a little Italian, but she also felt more comfortable speaking in English. So she hired me as her intern and then her assistant. And that was really where I feel like that was really my education was that costume. And so I was there for a few years and had to leave because of immigration after a few years.

22:02So, yeah. Well, we have to backtrack just for a minute to find out about this Vogue internship, which, to be honest, I did not know about. What is a fun memory from that time or a learning that you took away? Well, the only reason I got the internship was because, and this is really funny because I haven't reached out to her because I'm, like, shy, but a family friend of mine in Jamaica was good friends. He passed away a couple years ago, was good friends with Grace Coddington. And so when I was in high school, he kept saying, you know, if you want to do fashion, you have to meet Grace. And I was like, Grace?

22:37Like Grace Connington? And so he reached out to her and she gave me an internship. And I was working under, I think it was Esther Park, I think was her name. I was an intern for her. And, but I was mostly in, you know, this was 2003, I think. So, you know, pre, it just was another time. So most of what I did was just describe clothes from the closet for returns, I guess. So I just, that was really nice to speak about clothes in language and learn. I learned so much then. You get to see so many clothes in the boat closet. So many. I mean, it was insane. The best clothes. It was that time with like that Prada collection with the brooches, you know.

23:21That was incredible. But I was terrified the whole time. I was so scared. And, you know, I'm from Jamaica. I didn't have designer clothes. I was wearing H &M, and I was very shy. But the best day was at the end of the internship, Grace really wanted to take me on a shoot so that I could have that experience. I think it was Stephen Mizell that was shooting, and it was like Raquel Zimmerman. It was like four of the biggest models, and it was somewhere, I want to say it was like a studio in Long Island City or something like that. And I remember like the jewelry being dropped off with the security and my job was just to iron the whole day.

24:02And it just was incredible. I just I'll never forget that day. Well, we always say at Vogue that we have many jobs. We all work very hard. And maybe that was good training for your job. Now you have your jobs now. You have two very big jobs running Diatima, of course, and creative directing Prenza Schooler. How are you managing to work on both of these things? How does a woman divide her time? I said to somebody the other day that I've learned how to invent time. That's a good one. You know, I've tried to, well, I'm very lucky to have someone that helps me with the calendar at Proenza because otherwise it would be impossible.

24:43But I try to keep it somewhat structured where I spend the first few days of the week at Proenza. So I will oftentimes go to my studio that's three blocks away after my day and just think about things or deal with anything urgent. And then I'll spend the next three days. So it's like four days and three days. That's seven days a week. Yes. And I'll spend the next three days at Diotima. And I try to have at least one of those days by myself because I need just time and space to think. Because a lot of this role is at Proenza, especially because it's a much bigger company than Diotima, obviously, is meetings.

25:20So it's nice to find space for quiet. So I think that's the only way that I've been able to manage. And a very supportive team on both sides and a very supportive wife who cooks me Jamaican food. So when I get home, I have a little bit of grounding. You're a CEO at Prenza Schooler. She hired you sort of like an interim position last summer. And she did a piece, an interview with Vogue Business last week. And she said that she was very impressed with your leadership style. that it was really effective and it was a great fit for the brand. So when you think about your own style at work, how do you sum it up?

26:00I think I come from another, I mean, I grew up in the generation of the old school of fashion where, you know, people would throw books at you or scream at you or, you know, it was not healthy. and I think a lot of us who are new now to having their own brands but experience that, we wanted something different for the industry. So I think it's important to lead with kindness and I hope that that comes across. But everyone that is a part of the process is so important and everyone is an expert in what they do. I like to spend time with everyone and hear their feedback. I don't like to be a dictator.