How Diotima Designer Rachel Scott Builds a ‘Sultry Haven’ for Girls

Diotima designer Rachel Scott thought it was a mistake when she heard she was nominated for American Womenswear Designer of the 12 months on the 2024 CFDA Trend Awards, which can be introduced Monday night time on the American Museum of Pure Historical past in New York.

“I screamed within the midst of an appointment as a result of it was such a shock,” stated Scott, 40, who’s nominated alongside business stalwarts Marc Jacobs, Tory Burch, Thom Browne and Proenza Schouler, after launching her model simply three years in the past — and successful the CFDA’s Rising Womenswear Designer award simply final yr.

“I can’t imagine I’m in that group of people that I’ve a lot respect for and have had a lot respect for my complete profession — and who’ve multimillion- slash billion-dollar companies,” stated the designer, who hails from Kingston, Jamaica.

It was no mistake.

Bootstrapping her enterprise utilizing $30,000 of non-public financial savings, vogue prize and grant cash, Scott has created probably the most thrilling new girls’s luxurious manufacturers to return out of New York in years. Together with her genuine, nuanced and inclusive imaginative and prescient of Caribbean model rooted in tailoring, sportswear and knit dressing with handcrafted particulars, fringe and embellishment, she’s achieved the mix of on a regular basis and extraordinary that vogue can’t get sufficient of proper now.

Her spring 2025 assortment, proven in a movable presentation format, conjured Jamaican pocomania, prim-and-proper churchgoing and dance corridor partying in a rush of sequins, fringe, palm frond embroideries and pores and skin, and was universally praised as probably the greatest of the season throughout all cities, main to select up from further retailers. She now has 25 accounts globally, together with Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Internet-a-porter. For spring, she has additionally broadened her vary by providing her first denim, footwear and embellished baggage.

“It’s been an ideal yr and we’ve grown — orders are up 30 % from final yr and 25 % from final season,” Scott stated at her studio on the Decrease East Aspect, the place she is the one full-time worker, however six others assist her as consultants and part-timers.

One solely has to take a look at the variety of shuttered manufacturers in recent times to know the challenges of working an unbiased vogue label are actual, particularly with shops and on-line retailers contracting and luxurious spending slowing. Scott feels the pinch of money move points every day, juggling manufacturing prices and funds for her enterprise, which is at the moment 94 % wholesale. However everyone seems to be rooting for her.

Retail and Business Assist

“She is so properly positioned to essentially seize this second and go properly into the long run as a result of she strikes the proper steadiness between having emotional clothes that you’re actually impressed to purchase since you don’t have something prefer it in your closet precisely, however it’s additionally actually sensible and wearable. And the craft makes it really feel like one thing that’s a worthy funding,” stated April Hennig, who has labored with Diotima in her function as chief merchandising and advertising and marketing officer of Moda Operandi and founding board member of RaiseFashion, the nonprofit devoted to providing advisory providers to BIPOC manufacturers.

Moda Operandi launched Diotima in 2022 with a trunk present and its enterprise with the label has continued to develop, now grossing greater than $300,000 in gross sales yearly, with constant full-price sell-throughs and a fall 2024 sell-through of greater than 50 % up to now, Hennig stated.

“It’s uncommon to discover a designer at this stage who’s each singular in her design vocabulary with a well-rounded vary that merchandises superbly on the ground,” stated Yumi Shin, chief merchandising officer of Bergdorf Goodman, which began stocking Diotima for pre-spring 2023. “It’s clear to us that Rachel is well-equipped to construct the Diotima model and take it to the subsequent stage.”

Along with retailers, celebrities and stylists have additionally embraced the model, with Angel Reese rocking a purple scorching fringed crochet Diotima costume for the Victoria’s Secret Trend Present final week.

“I feel for some time we had been lacking a modernized, female-led, sensuality throughout the style collections at massive. Diotima presents a sultry haven for the trendy girl, inclusive of all of the intricate qualities that come together with that, be it the will to be extra androgynous, provocative or mental,” stated Marika Ella-Ames, who kinds the gathering’s shows, campaigns and look books, in addition to creatively consulting for the model. “To not point out the truth that Diotima can also be the primary rising vogue home to return out of Jamaica, which is as historic as it’s thrilling. To see the anecdotes and nuances of Jamaica, its historical past and its tradition, be so profoundly obtained all through the business is highly effective.”

A Regular Rise

Whereas her rise could appear fast, it’s not as if Scott got here out of nowhere.

She launched Diotima at age 37 after a long time of experiences at a various group of manufacturers, each setting her up indirectly for what she is turning into.

After graduating from Colgate College with levels in advantageous artwork and French literature, she determined to enter vogue, taking programs at FIT in New York, Central Saint Martins in London and Istituto Marangoni in Milan. That led to a place at Costume Nationwide, the place she realized about Italian tailoring and “loopy elaborations,” akin to sequins utilized on their ends to imitate the look of astrakhan, she stated, nonetheless marveling over it now.

When her visa ran out, she interviewed with Phoebe Philo at Céline and Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen, however didn’t have sufficient expertise but to fill the roles. So she returned house to her mother and father’ home in Jamaica feeling dejected, she stated.

Shinae Lee, her finest pal from Colgate College whom she met at age 17 on the primary day of faculty, was working at Peter Som on the time. She purchased Scott a aircraft ticket to New York and inspired her to ship her résumé round. “I instructed her to get out of Jamaica and out of her head,” stated Lee, recalling how they bonded over vogue on the upstate New York college, and describing her pal as “worldly,” “at all times updated culturally” and “in a position to have a dialog about something.”

Even then, Scott would discuss desirous to have her personal label, stated Lee, who now runs operations for Diotima. “She at all times wished to do one thing associated to Jamaica, to amplify Jamaica’s voice via craft. Jamaica is a large a part of her, it’s what identifies her and the place her coronary heart belongs.”

Scott labored for a yr at J. Mendel, the place she relished the expertise of being hands-on in a workroom, after which landed at Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen’s modern model Elizabeth and James, which taught her concerning the industrial facet. Then she joined Rachel Comey in 2015 as a senior designer, working her approach as much as vp of design, footwear and ready-to-wear.

“[Rachel Comey] has an actual take care of her buyer, and I’d by no means thought concerning the buyer earlier than her…she actually thinks about the place these persons are going, what they’re doing of their lives,” Scott stated.

When she felt prepared to begin her personal label in 2021, it was her love for Jamaica that impressed her.

Modern Caribbean

“Rising up in Kingston is absolutely particular, since you’re in a metropolis with all of the means, however then my mom could be like, ‘let’s go discover a waterfall,’” she stated of the pure wonders of the island. She had a full childhood due to her mother and father — Noah, a furniture-maker, and Ruth, a flight attendant for Air Jamaica, who stoked her curiosity and wanderlust by taking her out of college and on journeys, sitting her within the leap seat on the aircraft. Her mom now oversees Diotima’s craft companions in Jamaica.

As mental as she will be, anybody who has been seated close to Scott at dinner can attest she additionally likes to have a superb time.

“I’ve been partying since I used to be 13,” she stated, including that the primary clothes she made as a teen had been barely there skirts to wear down dancing. “However then you need to communicate correct once you’re with sure folks — and it’s this properness that I discover fairly foolish, however actually fascinating,” she stated of the contradictions that make their approach into the label named after Diotima of Mantinea, the feminine thinker in Plato’s “Symposium,” who teaches him about love.

Though crochet is normally handed down from grandmothers, Scott realized it on her personal later in life, first appreciating it at native craft shops and ladies’s cooperatives that offered the doilies seen “in each auntie’s home” as desk decorations and bathroom paper covers, in addition to on G-string bathing fits and cover-ups for the vacationer business.

“They had been two discrete worlds that may by no means meet,” she stated of the right auntie and vacationer hedonist. “After I first began making garments with the doilies, the ladies had been like, ‘What are you doing?’ I took issues from the home setting within the area…however then I starched them and distorted them, made the doily right into a harness,” she stated of her early creations that coated the physique in overlapping crochet panels virtually like sea creatures.

She was intentional about working in a impartial palette, not desirous to fall into the cliched notion of Jamaican vogue — Rastafarian black, inexperienced, purple and gold — or to outline her model an excessive amount of as resortwear.

“To not criticize the manufacturers which have referenced the Caribbean earlier than — I feel that due to them, there was area for somebody like me and respect what they do — however these manufacturers are very totally different than mine as a result of they’re British or they’re New Yorkers and their perspective is at a distance. I wish to attempt to suggest a brand new thought,” she stated.

A Design Language

Crochet grew to become an prompt signature.

“[Rachel] just isn’t the primary designer to make use of crochet however she has put collectively a language the place you say that’s Diotima…and he or she has a stable enterprise head on her shoulders,” stated Kay Hong, the previous Proenza Schouler chief govt officer who has been mentoring Scott via the Vogue Trend Fund.

Instantly Scott realized there have been limitations to what she might produce. “I feel I had 5 girls working with me on the time and it’s all made by hand,” she stated. “I had to determine a approach to have this essential component of the model identification all through the gathering, maintaining in thoughts my sources. So I took a blazer I had within the first season, and stated what if we add some crochet? I sliced the blazer in half and inserted crochet and that was once I began mixing them collectively. It was actually out of necessity. And that took off.”

She was seen by the mainstream press virtually proper out of the gate, simply as the primary assortment dropped. Influential Oakland, Calif., retailer Sherri McMullen introduced on the model throughout its second season.

“She really celebrates the feminine spirit in her items. You are feeling that once you’re carrying them — and the essence of the Caribbean,” stated McMullen, who cohosted a dinner with Ayesha Curry for Scott in March of this yr.

Diotima has been a favourite on the style prize competitors circuit, with Scott being named a finalist for the LVMH Prize and a runner up for the CFDA Vogue Trend Fund in 2023, each of which added credibility and money infusions to the enterprise, she stated.

And he or she has since expanded from crochet to different types of craft on shirting, denim and different on a regular basis wardrobing items, in addition to attractive crystal mesh and macramé knits that spotlight the physique, all priced from $450 to $1,995. What’s not carried out in Jamaica is completed in Kolkata. “Paillettes, beading, massive studs, the broderie anglaise within the palm leaves, the faggoting sew to attach seams…I feel it’s so particular which you could put a chunk along with an ornamental hand sew,” she stated of the small print.

Channeling Tradition

Scott has additionally envisioned her model as a platform for modern Caribbean tradition, artwork and activism. For pre-fall 2022, she used underwater picture prints by Nadia Huggins, an artist from St. Vincent whose follow is “an try and construct a archive of the ocean and land that isn’t a colonial archive,” Scott stated. She photographed the gathering on Jamaican stylist, mannequin and trans activist Emani Edwards on the Nationwide Gallery of Jamaica as a delicate protest towards the nation’s discrimination towards gender nonconforming and LGBTQIA+ folks.

For spring 2023, she was impressed by Jamaican modern artist Laura Facey, finest recognized for the monumental sculpture Redemption Music, which serves as Jamaica’s nationwide monument to the Emancipation from Slavery. Facey made a chalk drawing known as “Seed,” which the designer become a caftan, and miniatures of her carved wood human hearts to model with the gathering.

Scott wish to collaborate on a movie subsequent, she stated, mentioning the socio-realistic Third Cinema movie motion of the Sixties and ’70s as a favourite style, and Mati Diop and Raoul Peck as two of her prime filmmakers.

“I don’t foresee us doing runway simply but…so it’s thrilling to consider different methods to do the presentation format,” she stated.

Subsequent yr, she’s dedicated to constructing out the direct-to-consumer facet of her enterprise so she just isn’t so reliant on the wholesale mannequin.

“There’s no different approach to get previous this fixed money move subject,” she stated. “So we began investing. We simply had our first e-commerce shoots, which I haven’t carried out as a result of it’s costly, however we additionally want the inventory to assist it,” Scott stated. “I feel I can carry again a crochet piece from three years in the past, as a result of folks preserve asking me for that and the web site is the proper place to have it. And I’m engaged on different types of grants, after which going to begin trying into Small Enterprise Administration loans as a result of we now have to, that’s going to be what we’ll do to make the flip.”

“She’s up for it…she’s been working as much as this her entire profession,” stated Lee, her operations supervisor.

As for the CFDA Awards on Monday night time? “I don’t really feel any strain. Simply being nominated is a large accomplishment,” Scott stated, including that this yr she’s going to come ready with a speech in hand, nevertheless. “I’m simply going to have a superb time.”