Founder of Diotima and Creative Director of Proenza Schouler Rachel Scott Talks Carrying On the Legacy of a Brand

0:10Kat Collings:Welcome to the Who What Wear podcast. I'm Kat Collings, Who What Wear's Editor-in-Chief, and today I'm joined by founder of Diotima and creative director of Proenza Schooler, Rachel Scott. We get into everything from landing her role at Proenza Schooler to blending her own vision with the brand's legacy, as well as a little sneak peek at what to expect for the upcoming New York Fashion Week show. It's all coming up on Who But Where.

0:42Kat Collings:Rachel, welcome back to the pod. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So last time we spoke, we talked about your upbringing, your fashion career, and of course, the launch of Diotima. For anyone just tuning in, I want to give a little background on your early career and the concept behind Diotima, and then we'll launch into all things Proenza Schooler. Tell me kind of how you got your start in fashion and what drew you to creating Diotima. I've always been obsessed with making clothes. It's just something that was in my upbringing and just like my childhood. And I'm sure I told you I used to make clothes for myself to go to Parsis.

1:17Not the same type of clothes I make now. How are they different? They were micro.

1:24Kat Collings:So I did grow up in Jamaica. So tiny, tiny skirts and triangles for tops. I love fashion. And I grew up in the Haiti of Vogue Italia. And that was like, I was obsessed. But I grew up in Kingston and I really wanted to get a really broad education. So I didn't study fashion initially. I studied French and art and then ended up going to Italy and studied fashion there. And began my career in Milan and then worked there for a few years. and then ended up moving to New York and then was just in the industry for a long time and loved my job and loved what I did. But I had a full, you know, very typical existential kind of crisis in the early days of the pandemic.

2:07And I think I just really needed to find meaning in what I was doing every day. And I think I was just kind of lost and I wasn't sure what I was doing anymore and just kind of decided that I needed to do something for myself. And that's why I launched Yotimo.

2:21Kat Collings:Most people, when they work for themselves, they don't look back. No. They're like, oh, this was what the right thing was. Also, time flies. Like it's been five and a half years, which is crazy to me. That is crazy. Yeah. I feel like your work started to get a lot of attention around 2023 or so when you were named a finalist for LVMH Prize, runner-up for the CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund, and in 2024, CFDA Women's Wear Designer of the Year. But you had your first runway show. So what was behind the decision to show finally on the runway and how did it change your process? As with everything with me, it's like creative and logistical, quite honestly.

2:59Presentations are wonderful and I really loved them. I really like to think about that moment of showing the collection to everyone as almost like creating this ephemeral film, essentially. And a presentation is two hours. It's kind of like the length of a film and like you create a scene, the setting and the sound and the cast, you know, these characters. And there was like this kind of arc to the presentation that had like moments of crescendo. And so it was really interesting for me to do it in that format. I think about the clothes in women's lives and in motion, you know, and if a model is just standing there, you're not seeing the full idea of the clothes, you know, you're not seeing a full idea of the silhouette and how it moves and interacts with the body and how the woman feels in it.

3:45So I was really interested in the walking of a runway show. I just felt like the right time. I mean, I've only done two runway shows for Diatima, but I guess I really wanted to make sure that I could capture what I was capturing with the presentations in runway. And so I moved quite slowly into that format.

4:02Kat Collings:And since we last spoke, you have, of course, become the creative director of Proenza Schooler. Can you share the story of how you landed the role? You know, it was super exciting for Jack and Lazaro, this opportunity that they had. And, And, you know, I'd never met them before, which is really funny, but we knew of each other. I was a big fan, have always been. They're like a few years older than me. And so like I always looked up to them and admired what they did. And the brand like holds such a special place in New York fashion and American fashion in a way that it was just incredible. You know, it was very much New York and it's very much an American brand, but it kind of superseded like these ideas of what an American brand should be.

4:39So I was like sad when I heard that they were leaving their brand that they founded. I think the guys obviously really wanted to make sure that it was going to be in good hands. Of course. I can't imagine how difficult that must be to leave something that you founded and had for nearly 25 years at the time when they left.

4:55Kat Collings:Your identity. Yeah. And they were on a long search and the current CEO, Shira Snyder, reached out to me and was like, we're not sure what we're going to do. We really love your work. Would you be interested in just like helping us get through this period? because I know you're busy with your brand Diatima. And I was like, sure, that sounds really fun. So I went in kind of secretly at the end of early summer last spring and just started supporting the team. And it's a weird thing to kind of try and mimic someone else's voice. So I couldn't put too much of my language on there. But also no one can replicate Jack and Lazaro.

5:30No one can speak in someone's language. I spent a lot of time looking into the archive and just trying to understand what it is that they did. And that was really special because I was able to pull things from like the entirety of the history of the brand and just see them on the body and look at the inside of pieces. And it was really great. And I think within like less than a month, Shira was like, this is actually going really well. Would you like to officially have the role? And I was like, great, yeah.

5:58Kat Collings:So there was no like job interview? No, I didn't do a project. I guess spring was my project. Right, right. Right. You're sort of, this is what I can do here. Yeah. Wow. No, there was no interview. There were lots of conversations. I mean, I did then have like more formal conversations with Jack and Nazaro. And why do you think you are specifically well-suited to be at Pro Enzo? Like, what do you think you bring to the brand? Their fashion was just so, it was global, you know, and I think there was craft and I have an obsession with craft and the handmade. And I don't know that there are other brands really, New York, that work like that with craft.

6:34I think it was interesting for them to have a woman in that role. I think Jack and Lazaro, they love the women of their lives and the women of Proenza. And I think you can see that. Yeah, you can. You can really see that. And so it always came from a place of admiration. And so I think it was interesting to now have a woman be in this position and someone that can embody like who this woman is. Probably my approach to craft, my global background.

7:01Kat Collings:So I imagine taking over a pre-existing brand takes a lot of research, right? You kind of mentioned diving into the archives. Can you share a little bit more about what that research was like? It's a weird thing because it's not like a heritage brand in like Europe, for example. You know, the brand has only been her own for a quarter of a century. You know, it's not like a long, super long history. There have been different eras of the brand. And there are things that maybe I was more personally drawn to than other things. And I tried to understand not like the specifics of collections or the specifics of pieces.

7:38But like I was trying to like boil it down to what was their language and what were things that are important to what they did in this brand. And I think there were some really clear things to me that stuck out. One of them was use of color. And I think they had a really strong, bold use of color, like primaries and like really vibrant colors. And my use of color is different, you know, and my language is my language. My hand is my hand. And so I tried to think about what it was that their use of color did. And so for me, there was like an energetic play of color, right? So it was like there were always kind of grounded neutrals and sometimes like softer pastels, but then these strong colors.

8:18And so colors almost reverberated off of each other. And so I was like, well, how do I do that in my way? There's a lot more like nuanced tonalities. And I think what they do is really beautiful. It's just not how I see color. So I try to think about how do I like take that and like inject that energetic relationship within the way I use color. So, you know, with fall, there are definitely strong colors, like colors that I find just energetic on their own, like the fluorescent orange. That fluo orange is really important, but it's not always like on the surface. Sometimes it's on the inside and there's like only the wearer gets to experience it or sometimes it's even within a material.

9:00So like a really strong blue and a green instead of it being like solid, pure color. It was then a moulinet. So it was like two yarns twisted together. I thought like that was a really interesting way to play with their use of color. And I think like I weirdly didn't really use blue before. But like Proenza blue is like. And I've come to love Proenza blue, actually. I kind of like it mixed with like a little bit of green mixed in there. Maybe that's because I'm Jamaican and like the Caribbean seas. always in my mind. So it's like a little bit of a different expression of that. I think their use of pattern and print is really important.

9:39And it's not something I've done it professionally in my career before my brand, but not something I would use so much in my brand itself. I think I'm much more textural than I am like print. That was a real intellectual kind of investigation, You know, because I was like, a floral can be so surface, but then also the history of use of flowers can be really, I don't know, political or intellectual. And so like with fall, I really thought about the history of different types of flowers and their symbolism. And then I ended up landing on this motif of the orchid for many reasons. One, because it's quite erotic.

10:17It's a bit sensual. You know, the flower itself, it kind of reminds me of like some of the collections and artworks I've done in the past. like from the little islands that season, you know, like there's sometimes these little Hawaiian prints like throughout the history of the brand. But then also like, you know, there's been moments in history where like there's obsession, like there's this idea of desire really like related to the orchid, you know. And so I thought that that was quite like rich.

10:44Kat Collings:Yeah. They would do prints a lot, but I was like, I need some form of technique in this, you know. So just printing is, I have a hard time with that. So like, I don't just print, I'll double print, I'll print the face and the backside. And then like, for that orchid in particular, we took a photograph of an orchid. We printed traditionally the photographs, it's like a film print, and we printed it traditionally. And like, you see, you know, the sloppy edges of like the film print, and then we hand painted on top of it. And then we re-digitized that. And then we printed that on fabric. And we also like hand painted it on leather and we did lots of things with it.

11:21I think I have to go through multiple moments of like process with it. Add a little craft, it sounds like, to be honest.

11:29Kat Collings:What percentage of the collection do you try and aim as like you and your lens and what percentage is like from Proenza like in its form as it was before you got to it? I think the goal is that everything has both. Yeah. I think with fall, it was really like a foundation laying. So, you know, dresses are obviously really important. So I had lots of fun with dresses. But tailoring is something that's been in the history of the brand and something I really love. But as a woman stepping into this role, I really thought a lot about wearing the clothes and about comfort. I did a whole kind of study on unstructured tailoring for fall.

12:03And some of it is in like double-faced fabrications that are like there's unstructured tailoring. So there's no Siri. There's no like interfacing. It's just double-faced construction, so they're quite soft. Or then I explore the idea of actually knitwear. So I did knit tailoring. And so with everything, it's like, yes, it comes from this kind of archive of what they did. But then it's also like my interpretation of it. So it was kind of like a foundation laying. And then I think now I'm going to start to push more and experiment more within that kind of push and pull of them and me.

12:36Kat Collings:I read that you had a dinner that sounded very interesting where you invited women of different backgrounds to help you sort of understand the women you were going to be designing for at Proenza. Did you like learn anything interesting from that dinner? Lots of things. Insights? Yeah. It was a dinner that we had around the holidays last year with like a very small group of some of our top clients. It was a totally like diverse group of women, all incredibly interesting. You know, some were lawyers or retired lawyers. There were like multiple art advisors, which is funny because some of them were actually my customers at Diatima as well.

13:12Kat Collings:Oh, okay. Which I didn't realize somehow. They're like, perfect. Proenza, the brand, and Diatima both have a very strong connection to the art world. A lot of my early supporters at Diatima were like Simone Yvette Lee. She was like, she bought from my very first collection and she continues to support. And like Ming Smith and like these incredible Thelma Golden. So like I've always had a really strong connection with the art world. And obviously, Provenzo and Jacquem Lazaro do as well. So there were our advisors who had Diatima pieces and were longtime Provenzo customers. There was like a Palazzo's instructor.

13:46There was a writer. There were, yeah, a really interesting group of women. And it was just a really kind of intimate environment. And I just was like asking them what were their favorite pieces. They were all different. There was one woman who spoke a lot about the tailoring and how much she loved the high armhole because she needed to feel like really like she was in the blazer and like she embodied it and like it didn't wear her. She wore it. And some of the women spoke about how the pieces felt very artful. Color came up, of course. Materials came up.

14:21Kat Collings:I feel like my favorite Proenza, if I'm pretending I'm at this dinner, this fluted skirt. Oh, I know. Exactly. And it has contrast stitching. Yeah. And just those little elements on it, the hardware and the contrast stitching, it just is like, I felt cool, you know, even though it was very like kind of a ladylike work appropriate skirt. Yeah. I think women do wear it a lot in their professional kind of like in professional moments. Right. Like they wear it to feel powerful. Exactly. And then they also wear it to event. And I think what's interesting is like playing with this notion of what event dressing can be.

14:55And I think I tend to dress a lot in separates. Like I'm not, I love dresses, but then I'll put them over a trouser. Like, I don't know. I think maybe it's my generation. Maybe it's like a generation of like women in New York. It's like a way we dress. There's always like this kind of interesting mashup of things together. And women in New York, they're so fab at all times of day. You know, they could be wearing like denim and like, I don't know, a T-shirt, but there's something about what they're doing that is so cool. And so I thought a lot about that and how to kind of play with like traditional ideas of what you wear in a certain context and how to like push against that.

15:33So maybe like tops are really long and like they kind of function like a dress, but they're not, you know, and that's really interesting. Because grommets and the contrast stitching are important. I think I'm still interested in playing with that because it's also a fun way of embellishment. It's not precious, you know. And there is this idea of the hand and machine. Like literally there is a machine and a hand stamping it. And so that's quite fun. I don't think I'm ready to get rid of the grommets yet.

15:56Kat Collings:Oh, I have not. And the last time we were on the pod, you shared that you've always been obsessed with language. I feel like that flows into the storytelling of it all and how you vivash. And you said the clothes that we wear are like our vocabulary. So I'm curious how you would define the language of Pro-Ens. Yeah, I'm still defining it, you know. I think it is very sharp and it's very precise. Yeah. I think I've like maybe injected a little bit of rebellion into there. Not a lot. With fall, it was quite measured, but it comes through like towards the end of the collection. It's a little bit more subtle than at Diatimo where it's like, it's obvious.

16:32Right. It's like, you know, there are like little things in there, like little, you know, gowns where all of a sudden the back kind of comes undone. Yes, yes. Or the looped fringe, like there's like chaos because then we start chopping at it, you know. Little haphazard drapes, like little surprises for the wearer on the inside. I think it's a subtle language. I think a lot about the language, but I also think about the woman. And I think there's like a layer of she's not revealing everything. She's very mysterious, you know.

17:03Kat Collings:That's the word I literally just had in my head when you said that. Yeah, there's lots of intrigue. So you don't know too much. which is not like obvious, but you walk past this woman wherever in the world and you're like, who is she? Right. And I think the Proenza woman has always been very cool and very smart and sharp. But like, I think she's going to be a little bit more intriguing. Yeah. Yeah. In another interview, you discuss the differences between how you and your Proenza predecessors, Jack and Lazaro, approach design. And you said a big difference is that you start with materials before getting into design.

17:34We work very differently. Really? Yeah. And I think the poor team, they're like, wait, it's been like a big learning curve for everyone to kind of adjust to my way of working. I grew up on design teams, you know, like the guys, they came straight out of school and their way of working is their way of working. You know, I'm also material obsessed and like technique obsessed and texture obsessed. And so when I'm building a collection, I, you know, I look at a ton of materials and then we start experimenting and trying new things and doing embellishments. And then I'll get some of the fabric in that we're trying and I'll do some draping and I'll look at some things from the archive.

18:15I'll manipulate those, experiment in there. It's quite amorphous in the beginning. And there's not, you can't like pinpoint what I'm doing. And it comes into focus. Exactly. It comes into focus and then like things become defined. And then I, then I like layer on top of those things that are defined. And so it's like a constant evolution throughout the process all the way till the end. Whereas the guys, they would, and maybe it's because there's two of them. I don't know. But they would like go away for a couple of weeks and sketch out the whole collection before even talking to anyone or looking at anything.

18:48Kat Collings:Interesting. And they would come in with the sketches and then the team would like then start sourcing. Backwards, flipped on its head. They're almost like collection architects. Yes. And not that they weren't, like they are hands-on, like they were in fizzings and like, you know, all of that stuff. But it just is a totally different approach. Yeah. How interesting. Shout out to the team for adaptability. I was curious if there's anything, learnings or things that were different with the scale of Proenza Schooler. It's obviously a much bigger company. The development team is a lot bigger. Like we have in-house a print designer and like we spend meetings doing palette and then they digitize a palette.

19:26Like so it gets like a bit corporate. And then I'm always I'm so resistant to like when you digitize this palette, you've lost all the essence. And so like a little bit of my messiness comes through for sure.

19:37Kat Collings:That's the spirit of it. Yeah, yeah. You don't want to lose the spirit. You don't want to kind of like dry things out. So I'm always trying to like inject a little bit of like life into more organized settings. Yeah. A little balance. Yeah. There's been some really fun celebrity sightings lately in Proenza. Michelle Obama recently. That was amazing. That was so cool. Amazing. Yeah. Is that like a dream come true? So I have addressed Michelle Obama before when I was at Rachel Comey. Oh, okay. Yeah, that was amazing. Yeah, yeah, that was amazing. What was she wearing in that? I wonder if we can dig up the photo.

20:14Yeah, it was like an ivory, like fluid shirt dress that had like ivory fringe. It kind of like, it wasn't a full shirt dress. It was like a wrap shirt collar, an ivory fringe. I think it was on a morning show of some form.

20:26Kat Collings:Okay, nice. Yeah, so that was like amazing, you know. But I didn't even know about this one. Literally, she wore it. Yeah, it wasn't custom or anything. It literally was the piece from the show. Oh, okay, wow. Yeah. And I found out on Instagram. Oh, that's fun. You're like, wait a minute. I said to the team, the PR team, they're like, we're so sorry. We didn't want to like get your heart up for it and then like get disappointed. I'm like, no, it's fine. That's awesome. That was really exciting. Yeah. And then Elle Fanning recently. Yeah, which is so funny. On my flight here, Elle Fanning was on the flight.