Proenza Schouler’s Best Moments in Vogue

Proenza Schouler’s Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough with Natasha PolyPhotographed by Arthur Elgort, Vogue

One day Proenza Schouler’s Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough were Parsons students, and the next they were fashion stars. Julie Gilhart, then the fashion director of Barneys New York, saw their precocious graduation collection and promptly snapped it up for the agenda-setting department store. In short order, A-list celebrities like Chloë Sevigny and Kristen Stewart were wearing their frocks on the red carpet, and the young duo won the inaugural 2003 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award.

Fashion’s overnight sensations don’t always make it, and many of the designers who came up alongside Hernandez and McCollough in post-9/11 New York have downsized or shuttered their businesses altogether. A decade-and-a-half later, Hernandez and McCollough are no longer the new kids on the block, but they still command the hippest crowds at New York Fashion Week. (They’ll be discussing the making of their upcoming Spring 2020 collection at Vogue’s Forces of Fashion conference in October.)

Those crowds have been witness to the designers’ aesthetic evolutions—from the famous bustier dresses of their early days through an earthy, crafty phase; the couture-ish experiments with feathers, frills, and lace that brought them to Paris; and a recent return to New York characterized by tough denim and power tailoring. The through lines? Their very American way of transforming essential wardrobe pieces—boss blazers, high-waisted jeans, pleated midi-skirts—into luxuries. And, of course, their abiding sense of cool.

Here, their best moments in Vogue.

Proenza Schouler’s Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough are speakers at Vogue’s 2019 Forces of Fashion conference, Oct 10th and 11th in New York City; learn more and buy tickets here.