Diotima Spring 2024 Ready-to-Wear collection, runway looks, beauty, models, and reviews.
Rachel Scott held her first presentation this New York Fashion Week, in a quiet gallery in Chelsea where models moved languidly around conical and anatomical heart-shaped sculptures laid on the ground. The clothes were unmistakably Diotima: Scott’s signature doily tops, the relaxed trousers with sprays of crochet, her knee-length pleated skirts, the suiting separates and work shirts with knit inserts. Almost every piece in the collection was intricate, and the backstory was equally complex.
Since launching her brand in 2020, Scott has aimed to show a rich view of Jamaican culture that challenges stereotypes. In the past, she’s cast the dancehall queen Carlene in her lookbook, and works with a knitting circle of women in Kingston to create her signature pieces. For Spring 2024, she collaborated with the artist Laura Facey—who Scott refers to as “probably the most famous living artist in Jamaica”—to stage her collection titled “Nine-Night.
Facey and Scott met over DMs, though Scott was long familiar with Facey’s oeuvre, which interrogates the legacy of slavery in Jamaica. The heart sculptures, of which models wore miniature versions, are pieces that Facey will place on boats to honor the lives lost to the transatlantic slave trade. The lookbook was also photographed, in part, on a property that was previously a plantation. The experience was “haunting,” according to Scott.
She wanted the collection to have a gravity as well, describing it as “contemplative.” . The clothes then, fittingly, didn’t feel dark. Instead, they felt like Diotima. The mesh and crochet of all different sizes and textures lived next to mens-y suiting. A compelling addition was the gold basketweave fabric used in pinafores and skirts with a vibrant red lining. Scott has a soft spot for the new white fringe dress, worn over a suit.
Her collection is inherently ambitious. This is a designer whose most recognizable pieces are almost entirely see-through, but whose label remains sophisticated and intellectual. She’s speaking to artists, or at the very least artistic people. Through these clothes, this location, and the collaboration with Facey, she drove that point home.