Rachel Scott telegraphed some of what was to come at Proenza Schouler with the invitation to her spring show: an acidic yellow image, its dark markings blurred almost beyond recognition. Familiar, but not quite. That slippage between something known and something newly perceived proved an apt entry point for Scott’s second collection for the house, a sensual, powerful outing that found the designer working with greater latitude.
If fall laid a deliberately restrained foundation, spring had more abandon. Scott kept returning to the particular freedom of New York women, who, she said, aren’t especially bound by rules of dress: a gown can be casual, a casual piece can be eveningwear. “Everything is admissible,” she said. “The woman of New York kind of reflects the city, and they kind of reflect each other.”
Scott translated that friction through saturated color, craft and silhouettes that placed the woman — rather than the clothes — firmly at their center. Ultramarine, chrome and quartz yellow, guava and coral cohabitated with black, cream and sienna in combinations that occasionally jarred, then clicked.
That began with the body. Sharp shoulders, a Proenza mainstay, gave way to curving hips; lithe dresses skimmed the figure while cowls, flanges and pleats created room around it. A chrome-yellow pointelle cardigan swelled gently from the waist, while a seafoam strapless dress traced the torso before breaking into articulated flounces. Elsewhere, diaphanous layers and pale sequins floated past with flashes of yellow underneath. The clothes were feminine without becoming prim, sensual without fetishizing the body.
“The clothes don’t wear her. There’s a space for her,” Scott said. “They adapt to the body.”
That ease didn’t preclude considerable technique. A tiger — a little feral punctuation amid the polish — was never simply printed, but hand-knit, pieced in woven intarsia and pleated, or rendered through hand tufting. Roses began as cyanotypes made from actual flowers on a New York rooftop before being manipulated into prints, including a spectral version on organza. The handiwork was rarely precious; craft complicated familiar imagery rather than merely embellishing it.
Proenza’s own codes proved equally pliable. Grommets punctuated leather, archival ideas resurfaced, and the PS1 returned as the PS1 Walker, developed by Scott with Reed Krakoff. Named for the house’s original Walker Street studio, it pares back the popular 2000s-era bag, softening its geometry, reducing hardware and tracing some of its former construction through stitching and hand-tacked details. Scott called the original “fun to look at” and nostalgic, but wanted “a suppleness and a softness” for now. Its nostalgia was recognizable enough to stir memory, but evolved enough to create fresh desire.
The former Rubin Museum made an ideal backdrop, its spiraling staircase sending models and New York characters coursing through a space layered with the city’s history. Scott’s women appeared refined, undone, severe, sensual — sometimes within the span of a few looks.
There has been plenty of hand-wringing over what New York Fashion Week needs to matter now. Collections like this offer one answer. Scott isn’t treating Proenza as a relic to preserve or a blank slate to overwrite. Rather, she is probing its codes and breathing her own instincts into them, building clothes with rigor, allure and an ageless sense of possibility around women who already know themselves.
