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NEW YORK — Rachel Scott, the designer behind cult New York label Diotima, will succeed Proenza Schouler founders Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who were tapped to design LVMH’s Loewe brand earlier this year.
Scott will take the reins as Proenza Schouler’s creative director on Sept. 2, with her first collection, Autumn/Winter 2026, set to be shown in February 2026.
The brand’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection, a collaboration between the design studio and Scott, who joined as a consultant earlier this year, will “serve as an opening statement and an intimate preview of her perspective,” according to a statement by the brand.
Scott will continue to design Diotima, and is set to show her latest collection for the brand on Sept. 15, as part of New York Fashion Week.
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The Jamaica-born designer has become a closely-watched force on New York’s fashion scene for a sensual approach that’s rooted in a reverence for craft and nods to Caribbean culture, and grapples with issues of race, gender and our relationship to work and labour.
“Craft doesn’t have an aesthetic. Craft is technique and execution,” Scott said on The BoF Podcast in July. “There are endless possibilities, and on a conceptual level, I think that craft is the most intimate form of fashion. Because it is made by hand, there is this energy exchange.”
Diotima’s detailed crochet pieces and carefully embellished tailored jackets are stocked in influential retailers Bergdorf Goodman, Moda Operandi, McMullen and Kirna Zabete. In 2024, Scott was named the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s Womenswear Designer of the Year.
The brand’s Autumn/Winter 2025 collection, which was presented in February and examined historical representations of Black women, burnished Scott’s already ascendant profile, with The Cut’s Cathy Horyn calling her “one of the few designers who took real risks.”
Before launching her own label in 2021, Scott worked as an assistant designer at Costume National in Milan, then moved to New York, where she spent four years at Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen’s Elizabeth & James and seven years at Rachel Comey, becoming VP of design.
Scott is joining Proenza Schouler at a pivotal time for the brand.
The label, once one of the most promising start-ups in New York fashion, is in the midst of a years-long turnaround effort after McCollough and Hernandez, who remain shareholders and sit on the company’s board, regained control of the brand with backing from Mudrick Capital. Last October, Proenza Schouler named a new chief executive, former Shopbop president Shira Suveyke Snyder.
“Rachel brings a fresh and female perspective to a brand built on the spirit of the modern American woman,” said Snyder in a statement. “Her profound understanding of Proenza Schouler’s brand codes, paired with her exceptional ability to marry craft with innovation, made her the natural choice to lead the brand forward.”
