For their fourth collection, Lazaro Hernandez and partner Jack McCollough aimed for "something soft and chic." The show, which featured one model per look, elegantly built upon the duo's strengths, in order to achieve that softness: intricate seaming, strong coats, silk bustiers, virtuoso embellishment. They carried over last season's focus on feathers and metallics, but with a new theme that mixed surf, Arab, and African influences. One characteristically cool outfit paired an embroidered gold tank with khaki cotton shorts, while a mahogany and cream jacquard silk velvet skirt was all sophistication. Intricately embroidered wood-pattern pieces and textural, graphic prints demonstrated Hernandez and McCollough's devotion to—and skill with—the subtle art of surface treatment.
There was strong sportswear aplenty, from a bleached alligator coat to a printed lamé jacket, and sharp trousers were shown alongside shorts and pencil skirts—all in a twisted palette that successfully combined mint, lilac, brown, khaki, and white. It was perfectly framed by some mean metallic shoes and supported by a soundtrack that mixed the Beach Boys, Magnetic Fields, and Davie Allan. The finale—Hana Soukupova, Gemma Ward, and Daria Werbowy parading by in floaty, patterned dresses worn over those signature bodysuits—summed up both the skill and the feeling Proenza Schouler has managed to distill in just four seasons.
