Rachel Scott launched her label Diotima last May with a pre-fall collection, so this 2022 iteration feels like an anniversary. For her first outing, she employed Jamaican crochet artists to create one-of-a-kind tops and dresses that felt more like pieces of art than homemade garments. Some of those have become signatures–like her spider-like web top—and have sold well at her wholesale partners, Ssense and McMullen. “Above and beyond everything, the crochet has done the best. It’s a very different look from the crochet you find on the market now,” Scott said, before reflecting on how her designs have changed. “It’s been a year. It’s been hectic. I’m having more fun with this collection and just playing with the stuff I’ve started a lot more. I feel more comfortable pushing in those categories.”
“Those categories” are sharp ’80s tailoring, mesh tops, and Caribbean-inspired clothing. One thing that’s impressive about Scott is how she manages to make an oversized grandpa suit (she’s nicknamed it “junior”) fit in with a barely-there crochet dress akin to a fishing net. She blends sexy and prim to interesting effect. This season, her new crochet dress is basically a tank top with really elongated straps, a waistband, and hand-applied crystals. The model wears it with nothing underneath, but a slip skirt would fit in just fine. The best suit is made from a laminated woven textile (introduced last season) with a crochet appliqué on the leg; you get both a clash of textures and a flash of upper thigh.
Scott has collaborated with Nadia Huggins, an artist from St. Vincent who takes arresting underwater photographs. They created a “Tropiques” print featuring a sea urchin, sand dollar, and snake on a soft woven fabric. “She thinks of her whole project as creating a new Caribbean archive and one that has a new subjectivity,” Scott says. In a typically cheeky move, one of the dresses totally covers the model from neck to wrist to ankle, save for a crochet panel across the bust and a super-high leg slit, but she also offers the print in more demure button-downs and a shin-length skirt. The sea motif continues in the use of moire and a sea urchin corset. Scott describes a pair of pants modeled after cricket uniforms, with shell-like pads on the knees, as a continuation of the Caribbean influences. Compared to a year ago, you can see the development of the brand—places where Scott pushed a bit further, as she says—but it’s still recognizably Diotima.
