In a blow to New York fashion, Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez announced today that they’re leaving the label they founded in 2002 as young graduates of Parsons School of Design. McCollough and Hernandez, whose departure is effective January 31, will remain on the board and continue to be shareholders, and the brand’s CEO, Shira Suveyke Snyder, who was hired in October, is heading up the search for a new creative director.
“We feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to build such an extraordinary team, some of whom have been with us since day one… We’re confident that we’ve been able to impart some of what fuels us creatively, and through them, Proenza Schouler will continue to evolve in a way that makes sense not only for the brand, but for the moment,” McCollough and Hernandez told Vogue.
“A search for our successor is underway, and it will be fascinating to hear what Proenza Schouler has meant to these individuals: so many memories, so many periods of work…it’s been two decades of collections. We started this company out of our bedroom while still students in school, barely into our twenties. We could never have imagined all those years back the transformative road that was ahead of us. We are lucky to have had an incredible support system around us, both within and outside the company, people who feel like family, and it is because of them that Proenza Schouler is what it is today, and we hope that in some small way, this journey has left a tiny, indelible mark on NY fashion.”
The designers celebrated that 20th anniversary in 2023, inviting Chloe Sevigny, one of their first celebrity fans, to open their Autumn/Winter show that year. McCollough described it as “our most personal collection yet — less revolving around a theme, [and] more looking at the actual women in our lives: what is it they want?”
Understanding what stylish women want is one of the designers’ strong suits; they’ve cultivated a cool-girl crew that includes stars like Sevigny and Natasha Lyonne, fashion insiders such as Moda Operandi co-founder Lauren Santo Domingo and W Magazine editor-in-chief Sara Moonves, and members of the art and literary crowds from Olympia Scarry to Ottessa Moshfegh, who’ve grown up alongside them. That cool factor helped land them the first-ever CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund prize in 2004 (you can see their best looks in Vogue here). Seamless, the Douglas Keeve-directed feature-length documentary about the competition, earned both designers their first mentions on IMDb.com. They also received numerous accolades from the CFDA over the years, including the 2003 Swarovski Award for Ready-to-Wear [now the Emerging Designer award], the 2009 Accessory Designer of the Year award for their best-selling PS1 bag, and the Womenswear Designer of the Year award in 2007, 2011 and 2013.
The Proenza Schouler origin story abounds with fairytale moments. When Hernandez, still a student, found himself on a plane with Vogue’s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, he scribbled a note on a napkin and handed it over to her in first class. She was frosty, reportedly, but she passed his note along, and two weeks later, he had an internship at Michael Kors. (McCollough, for his part, worked at Marc Jacobs while still at school.) Fast-forward to their graduation in 2002: Julie Gilhart, then Barneys’s fashion director and a stalwart fashion scout, was in the crowd and liked what she saw so much she bought the collection for the agenda-setting New York department store.
Now, McCollough and Hernandez leave behind a brand rooted in American sportswear; though they’ve leaned into power tailoring and goddess dressing since the pandemic, their most recognisable hits include a dip-dyed velvet day dress, pleated midi skirts, tie-dyed tees, and those still-iconic-all-these-years-later bustier tops and dresses.
