Of all the places where Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez have held their Proenza Schouler shows — the Whitney Museum’s former location, the Brant Foundation, the Hudson River waterfront, to mention a few — the loft on Harrison Street in Tribeca seemed the most quintessentially Proenza, certainly the sunniest.
Double-story windows let in light and brilliant blue sky on Wednesday, the first day of the spring 2025 collections. Already! The vast room, with drab white walls and unfinished wood floors, has been untenanted for 20 years, apparently — a time capsule of downtown New York. But their collection was not about trying to recapture the glow and glamour of an era. Quite the contrary, it was about moving forward, escaping the fashion doldrums before they trap you.
For three seasons — since their hit show in February 2023 that opened with Chloë Sevigny in a black pantsuit and white shirt — the Proenza designers have been sharpening their image. It was an overdue mental exercise, and it paid it off with great tailoring, new signature styles of jeans, better knitwear, and a first-ever Proenza logo. But, as McCollough said on Wednesday morning, “We’re not minimalists.” And maybe last season’s stripped-back collection of mostly black-and-white looks — monastic, in hindsight — drained some of the zest out of Proenza.
Time, then, to be nimble and less serious. McCollough and Hernandez are not sailors, though the stripes and sailor pants and breezy volumes in their new collection hinted of boats. I preferred to think of two dudes taking a good hard look at their course and deciding to chuck out certain things — not to strip back this time but to lighten.
The biggest change was the number of styles that showed bare legs and arms, like striped oversize shirts that doubled as dresses and miniskirts with an offhand wrap effect. Or a pair of strapless party dresses, in pale violet or white, made of yards and yards of silk-organza tubes. Even at close range, the streamers look like ordinary silk cords. But, in organza, they’re virtually weightless. As a design, it answers the desire to have evening clothes that don’t feel overtly dressy or ghastly red carpet.
In many ways, this collection thoughtfully expanded Proenza Schouler’s image and mainly in the direction of sophisticated sportswear. “We want to stay a step ahead,” Hernandez said. The designers retained some of their key tailoring, notably a lanky white blazer in gabardine (or possibly crêpe) with a spare navy top and navy sailor pants. Indeed, the straight suit gets broken up this time, and the new jacket variation is a close-fitting knit. Also smart were the easy, poncho-like tops in simply striped knits and loose tops that appeared to have wings or floaty sails in back.
All in all, this collection offered more points of access, more ways to play with a single item, like those flippy poncho tops or the cool sailor pants. But if the show itself had a weakness, it was the lack of character and physical diversity of the models. To be sure, the majority were relatively new faces. But to go with that marvelously sunny and open room, not to mention the sporty range of clothes, you wanted a similar sense of aliveness and character in the girls. It clearly is possible.
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