The stars have aligned for Rachel Scott this season. On top of debuting her first full-fledged collection as creative director of Proenza Schouler last week, the Jamaican-born designer secured her ultimate partnership for her own label, Diotima. “It has long been a dream of mine to create something inspired by Wifredo Lam,” said Scott. The late Cuban modernist painter, whose boundary-blurring art explored his complex Afro-Asian Latino heritage, is currently having his largest-ever American retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. On February 15, Scott held her second Diotima runway show, which drew on months of research and close collaboration with Lam’s estate.
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Scott recalled learning of Lam at university while studying the anti-colonial Négritude movement, led by Black and Caribbean intellectuals like poet Aimé Césaire and philosopher Frantz Fanon during the 1930s through 1950s. It was in 2021, just after launching Diotima, that Scott reencountered Lam’s work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition, “Surrealism Beyond Borders,” which examined Surrealism, one of several artistic movements with which Lam is associated. Born in Cuba, Lam endured multiple wars and spent most of his life in Spain, France, and Italy.
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“I believe what’s most radical about Wifredo’s work is its undefinable nature. It’s Cuban and anti-imperialist, but it’s also transnational. It operates on this plane that you can’t boil down to just one concept, and I feel very aligned with that,” said Scott, adding that she feels a “spiritual connection” to Lam’s work. His œuvre is full of contrasts: figurative yet abstract. Severe yet erotic. Poetic yet politically charged. Certain works, none more so than his iconic La Jungla (1942-43), part of MoMA’s permanent collection, are bursting with color, while others, such as a Femme-Cheval (1948), feature muted, earthy tones. Scott harnessed both palettes for Diotima’s new collection, which paid homage to Lam’s hand through unusual fabric manipulations (sculptural handmade intarsias, Cubist-like fabric-strip assemblages, and figure-framing tubular knits that descend into fringe evoking sugarcane and heliconia plants) rather than literal artwork reprints. Scott also nodded to the “graphic nature” of Lam’s personal wardrobe through pinstripes and embroidery mimicking corduroy.
Of course, there was crochet, which Scott produced in Jamaica, but for the first time she also started working with Refugee Atelier, a New York nonprofit that empowers female refugees by providing fair-wage opportunities in textile artistry. “Last season I spent a lot of time thinking about carnival as this moment of resistance in the face of really repressive systems, and I think those sentiments continue this season,” said Scott, who is “endlessly inspired by this incredibly rich tradition that exists in the Caribbean and the diaspora.” The designer wants to make “an anti-imperialist statement” with this new collection and her brand in general. Like Lam, Scott celebrates Caribbean culture as much as she condemns some of its political realities.
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The fruits of Scott’s labor were unveiled at a raw space in Manhattan’s Financial District, which was sheathed in the exact shade of burgundy paint featured in Scott’s favorite room in Lam’s MoMA retrospective. The soundtrack fused Cuban music with Nina Simone and Stravinsky. Lam often listened to classical music while painting; that was one of countless facts Scott learned from Lam’s son, Eskil, who heads his estate, and to whom Scott is indebted for this “gift” of an opportunity.
“It has been fascinating to witness how my father’s artistic language can move beyond the canvas,” he said. “He always sought to create bridges between cultures and to convey the pride and strength of the Black spirit.” It was Scott’s originality and “strong commitment to expressing and celebrating a Caribbean spirit” that won Lam’s son over. “I believe my father’s and Rachel’s visions complement one another naturally,” he said. “They’re both rooted in identity, movement, and the transformation of tradition into something contemporary.”