Proenza Schouler—the quintessential downtown label from Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, going strong after more than 20 years—is usually one of the anchors of New York Fashion Week. For the Spring/Summer 2025 season, the brand got ahead of the calendar, presenting its latest designs days before the week’s official start—a clever move that allowed the industry and the internet to focus on a collection that felt immediately wearable (as in: “I want to wear it now”). A specific clip of social media’s favorite It girl, Devon Lee Carlson, walking in loose black trousers paired with an oversize white blazer with sharp lapels, spread quickly.
Carlson has long embodied the effortless cool that McCollough and Hernandez have distilled into their brand, so her modeling for them felt almost predestined.
It also feels like the encapsulation of everything this particular collection was about. It’s clothing you see someone wearing while they’re pounding the pavement in Midtown Manhattan, making you think: I want that. You desire what they’re wearing because it’s good, but also because you have a sneaking suspicion that wearing it will help you become like them. And who doesn’t want the uncomplicated, crisp chill of a New York City It girl wearing Proenza?
In the show notes, Hernandez and McCollough mentioned being inspired by maritime references and floating sail panels. Stripes were a dominant through line in the collection, but not as we tend to picture them, horizontal lines across a bateau-neck shirt. Instead, they marked asymmetrical tops falling off the shoulders, excess fabric trailing behind models as they walked. They peeked out from tailored cropped blazers, covering collarbones and necks. They adorned the typical large button-up pinched and supersized to look like a dress.
Marinière stripes don’t have the same cool cred as other patterns and prints, like leopard skin or tie-dye. But with this collection, Hernandez and McCollough prove them just as worthy. It’s easy to think of navy and white stripes as inherently French, but Proenza Schoulder has made them feel entirely New York.
Proenza Schouler Spring 2025
