{"id":92165,"date":"2024-07-10T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-10T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=92165"},"modified":"2024-07-01T15:12:59","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T15:12:59","slug":"diotima-rachel-scott-profile-grazia-usa-summer-2024","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/diotima-rachel-scott-profile-grazia-usa-summer-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Scott is a Dream Weaver"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Fall\/Winter 2024 presentation. Photo Credit: Martina Keenan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been really, really busy,\u201d says Diotima founder and creative director Rachel Scott when we connect on Zoom in mid-April. She\u2019s not kidding. Scott, the Kingston, Jamaica-born, New York-based designer of crochet and crystal mesh dresses that are quickly becoming a 2020s going-out uniform, is telling me where she\u2019s been since we last saw each other at her New York Fashion Week presentation two months prior and it\u2019s tiring just hearing her recount her travel schedule. \u201cI went to Paris for appointments, Oakland for a store event, came home, got married, went to Kolkata to meet with artisans, and now I\u2019m back in my studio starting on the next collection,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

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Diotima\u2019s signature crochet and crystal mesh designs travel from surf to city, worn by Krystle Wilson, DeVonn Francis, and Kareen Taylor at the Grand Cayman resort Palm Heights and by Ayesha Curry at the 2023 CFDA Awards in New York. Photo Credit: Bre Johnson courtesy of Palm Heights, Dimitrios Kambouris\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This whirlwind itinerary is par for the course for the 40-year-old creative. Scott took a leap of faith in 2021 by starting her own label and leaving her day job as VP of design at Rachel Comey the following year, and she hasn\u2019t stopped moving since. \u201cI think the moment I decided to change that one thing, everything in my life just unraveled and then rebuilt in a new and more interesting way,\u201d she reflects. The past three years have been filled with highs and lows. Scott met her now wife, Chaday Emmanuel Scott, a Jamaican events producer; came out; and divorced her husband, all while trying to build a fledgling business. \u201cI spent most of 2022 crying,\u201d Scott says. Last year, things started looking up: She got engaged in the midst of Diotima racking up a slew of industry accolades including winning CFDA American Emerging Designer of the Year<\/a> and being named a CFDA\/Vogue Fashion Fund runner-up and an LVMH Prize finalist.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the moment I decided to change that one thing, everything in my life just unraveled and then rebuilt in a new and more interesting way.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Rachel Scott and Chaday Emmanuel Scott at Palm Heights. Photo Credit: Bre Johnson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For the April wedding, both brides wore custom Diotima; Scott, a white crochet gown and Emmanuel Scott, a cream wool suit made from strips of fabric connected by decorative hand stitches. The looks centered Caribbean aesthetics and global artisanal craft, core tenants of Scott\u2019s vision for the label. As a child, Scott loved the starched crochet doilies her relatives used to decorate their homes, and she used to climb mango trees and sit up in their branches for hours to embroider. In her years working for luxury brands in New York and Milan, she saw that in an industry that privileges handmade things, there wasn\u2019t much attention paid to non-Western craft traditions, and she decided to do something about it. All of Diotima\u2019s crochet is made by women\u2019s collectives in Jamaica, and Scott also recently started working with an Indian embroidery atelier. \u201cCrochet is very much the foundation and it\u2019s threaded through the whole collection, but my interest has always just been craft and handmade and savoir-faire across cultures,\u201d Scott says.<\/p>\n

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Diotima\u2019s artisan partners in Jamaica. Photo Credit: Josh Kolbo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sustainability is of paramount importance for Scott, who works with the highest grade materials like FSC-certified viscose, GOTS-certified cotton, and RWS-certified wool. \u201cBut for me, much more than that sustainability is just an approach to making in general: making sure that the artisans we work with are appropriately compensated because most of the clothes in the world are made in the global south, and these are the people that are at the forefront of climate change,\u201d she says. Scott only designs two collections per year instead of four\u2014Fall\/Winter 2024 will start arriving in stores in June during the pre-fall window\u2014and since it\u2019s all lighter weight, it\u2019s meant to be seasonless anyway.<\/p>\n

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Diotima Fall\/Winter 2024 presentation, Diotima Fall\/Winter 2024 lookbook. Photo Credit: Martina Keenan, Deirdre Lewis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Part of the magic of Diotima is the way designs thread the needle between sensual and cerebral. While best known for bare crochet, the label features oversize tailoring in equal measure. \u201cI always like the sexy stuff with a bit of contrast,\u201d Scott says. Diotima\u2019s namesake is Diotima of Mantinea<\/a>, a female philosopher in Plato\u2019s Symposium who taught Socrates that love is beauty. It\u2019s the kind of bookish reference adored by Scott, a Colgate University alum who double majored in art history and French and also did a fashion design intensive at Istituto Marangoni.<\/p>\n

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Spring\/Summer 2024 presentation, Spring\/Summer 2024 lookbook, photographed at artist Laura Facey\u2019s home in St. Ann, Jamaica. Photo Credit: Deirdre Lewis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But while the Diotima woman is intellectual, she never takes herself too seriously; she\u2019s as at ease in an art gallery as she is at an all-night street party. The Spring\/Summer 2024 collection took cues from the work of the Jamaican sculptor Laura Facey, whose carved wood anatomical hearts explore the generational trauma of slavery in the Caribbean, and featured a collaboration with the artist on miniature versions worn as amulets. The Fall\/Winter 2024 collection had a much lighter focus, following the day in the life of a woman that begins at 4 a.m. after a louche night twerking to dancehall, and follows her buttoning up into daytime looks kids on TikTok might call \u201coffice siren\u201d\u2014 professional, with a bit of sex appeal. From her Zoom square I can see that Scott is wearing one such ensemble: a crisp cotton-poplin shirt with teardrop cutouts over a black bralette.<\/p>\n

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Spring\/Summer 2024 presentation. Photo Credit: Deirdre Lewis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Scott loves scrolling through Instagram photos tagged with her handle @diotima.world<\/a> to see how women style her designs IRL One wore a crystal mesh gown backwards with the scoop back barely grazing her breasts (\u201ciconic\u201d), while another layered a crochet top underneath a big white shirt (\u201creally chic\u201d). And then there\u2019s a story she heard from the sta$ of the Webster in L.A. \u201cBianca Censori, was trying on a crochet dress and apparently Ye took a pair of scissors and cut the bottom off because he wanted it shorter,\u201d she says. \u201cI can\u2019t wait to see my Ye \u2018collab\u2019\u2014it was a mini dress to begin with!\u201d While the looks don\u2019t always strike the balance between sexy and serious that Scott envisioned, she\u2019s cool with that. \u201cI enjoy seeing the lives that these pieces go on to live,\u201d Scott says. She should expect many more exciting tales.<\/p>\n

Read GRAZIA USA<\/em>\u2019s Summer Issue featuring cover star Sienna Miller<\/a>:<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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