Not that anyone doubted that Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough were New York fashion's cool kids, but for confirmation, you had only to glance at their front row tonight. Crammed in tight were Nicole Richie, Chloë Sevigny, Selma Blair, and Mary-Kate Olsen, more than one of whom came with her own bodyguard. Those starlets—and their social-set seatmates—are the target audience for the duo's energetic Fall collection, which had the edgy naïveté and sexy legginess that have lately become Proenza Schouler signatures.
The designers started off with a toggle jacket cropped below the breasts in a manner reminiscent of the silhouettes in their very first runway show. It was paired with high-waisted skinny jeans in a graffiti print made in collaboration with the denim label J Brand. (Just try keeping those on shelves.) The model carried their new P.S. 11 bag, a more structured take on the P.S. 1, and forged ahead on wooden-platform, stacked-heel shoes.
The scribble motif wasn't the collection's only eye-grabbing pattern. To create the woven jacquards they used for their baby-doll minidresses (worn, like almost everything in the show, with thigh-high hose), Hernandez and McCollough took photocopies of plaids, jiggling the fabrics on the copier's plate glass to create their blurred, distorted effects. Other prep-school standbys got seriously tweaked as well. Varsity jackets came with purple or green fur collars, while a snappy cheerleader skirt was teamed with a luxe black fox sweatshirt.
Relatively subdued and spare by comparison were a pair of accordion-pleated flannel minidresses in navy and pine green that were layered over black mesh shirts. Sometimes even It girls needs to dress like grown-ups. If not quite the wow that the duo's winning Spring collection was, tonight's outing was still a smart, satisfying sequel.
