All photos by Sonnyphotos
Dear Shaded Viewers,
Rachel Scott staged her second Proenza Schouler collection last night in the former Rubin Museum — once home to Barneys’ women’s store, the house’s first retailer, which gave the evening a nice sense of homecoming. Her thesis was New York itself: a city where a gown can be casual and the rules of dressing bend to the woman wearing them. Cowling and rounded hips softened the tailoring, seaming layered one silhouette over another, and merino knits were left looser and more undone than the house’s usual precision suggests.
Color did the most talking — saturated hues set against each other, sheer layers creating new ones, and a fluorescent pink velvet with real density. The tiger and rose motifs, worked through intarsia, tufting, and rose-made cyanotypes, showed genuine craft, even if the tiger’s repetition across techniques occasionally felt like demonstration for its own sake.
The evening’s real news was PS1 Walker, the softened, Reed Krakoff–assisted update to the house’s signature bag — a shrewd evolution rather than a reinvention, and confident for knowing the difference. Overall, a coherent, well-argued collection: not a showstopper, but a clear sign Scott knows what she wants this house to be.
Later,
Diane
