Proenza Schouler

Great expectations for Proenza Schouler

By Suzy Menkes
Published: September 7, 2007

Lazaro Hernandez picks up a military hat - the kind of plumed helmet a colonial soldier might have worn - and pulls out the clump of feathers with a big, infectious laugh. In the space goes a pompom bigger than the tail of the little dog that is running round the loft studio in New York's Chinatown.

"It's insane," said Hernandez, explaining how he and his partner, Jack McCollough, berated the milliner until he got the idea of hats with alternative decoration as the crowning glory of the runway show on Friday.

The design duo, both 29, go under the name of Proenza Schouler, coined from their mothers' maiden names. It might not trip easily off the tongue but it is the name in the news, especially because this is the first show under their new partnership with Valentino Fashion Group. Even if the two designers with an edgy, modern take on couture had not been hot since they founded their fledgling business five years ago, the current drama of Valentino's resignation has put them in the limelight.

"There are more expectations," said McCollough. "But a sense of relief business-wise."

After selling a 45 percent stake in the business for $3.7 million, the |Proenza Schouler duo are in a stronger position, no longer having "to scout for sponsorship - such a grueling process," as Hernandez puts it. But the designer also admits that the new investment brings them to a turning point of "being kids and now adults."


"We have to hang on to some sort of freedom," Hernandez said. "But we're growing up. Visually, how do you translate that idea into a narrative?"

Proenza Schouler has, from the start, represented sharp-edged contrasts: an uptown sensibility but with a raw energy and dense decoration contained in a taut silhouette. This season, the colonial soldiers are uniform and correct, but with savagery just around the corner.

"A wild animalistic quality," said McCollough, showing fabric that looks like tribal feathers but is in fact raw silk, its threads pulled and dyed with an animal print. Like a vest in a lush fabric that is turned inside out to show its cotton lining, or the feathers that captivate both designers treated to look like fur, these are clothes with a depth of texture within the firm outline.

"A lot of our aesthetic is based on the idea of contrasts," Hernandez said, emphasizing that their joint love of haute couture in its 1950s heyday comes through the prism of the recent era of grunge. "We're kids of the '90s," he said.

With their new backing, Proenza Schouler is the first house of its generation to be embraced by the fashion establishment. Their story is already legend: two friends at Parsons School of Design in New York who started working together; and a chance airport encounter with Anna Wintour, the editor of American Vogue, in which Hernandez, emboldened by his mother, gave Wintour a paper napkin on which he wrote in lipstick-red crayon of his fashion hopes and dreams. Wintour enabled an internship for Hernandez at Michael Kors and for McCollough at Marc Jacobs. They went on to win fashion awards in the United States and to have a smash hit last spring with a low-priced line for the mass-market retailer Target.

Apart from giving the name to the company, their mothers have played a key role.

"Every young boy who is interested in fashion - the first memory of clothes is your mother," Hernandez said. McCollough has just reignited his experience as a small boy living with his parents in Japan by going back to that country and merging memories of his mother's elegance and her Chanel No. 5 perfume with Japanese fishermen's work wear. The result is slender outfits with kimono sleeves in woven fabrics.

The two work together, both sketching. (McCollough works on computer paper and with a bolder hand than the more delicate details from Hernandez.) McCollough says that both are equally inspired by their fetish book of Christian Dior from 1947-1957, looking at the Irving Penn images of high fashion at the beginning of each season.

"Libraries are our thing," said McCollough, explaining that they are not into flea market vintage clothes. Although they like to escape to the country, where McCollough's dog is as huge as his partner's is tiny, the clothes, with their sensual built-in bras and beaded embroideries, look like part of a cityscape.

"Our sensibility leans more towards urban," Hernandez said. "But we like things that are aged and have a patina. Urban doesn't have to be slick. We are not catering to 'uptown' customers - we are not into definitions. We want to avoid being pigeonholed."

in context: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/07/style/rpro.php?page=1