Proenza Schouler Duo Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez Open Up | Screen Tests

Proenza Schouler Duo Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez Open Up | Screen Tests | W Magazine

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In this Screen Tests interview, fashion designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez open up about the creative process and their 10-year journey as Proenza Schouler.
From www.wmagazine.... :
"On an oppressively humid evening in July, Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, the designers behind Proenza Schouler, were discussing the future of a cactus. The question at hand was where the spiky cylindrical blob should go inside their first retail store, located on the fashion gold coast of Manhattan’s upper Madison Avenue."
McCollough and Hernandez still manage to project an almost wide-eyed curiosity that’s all the more refreshing given that this year marks their 10th in an industry that often can be tinged with cynicism."
"McCollough and Hernandez have been united, as a couple in life as well as in business, since they met as students at New York’s Parsons School of Design-and thus operate as single organism, finishing each other’s sentences and reaching decisions through a kind of osmosis that is as charming as it is mysterious. "
The son of Cuban émigrés, Hernandez grew up in Miami, where he honed his understanding of the ever-shifting wants and needs of women in his mother’s beauty salon.
Such an attitude could come across as posturing, since the two are now heading a multimillion-dollar company, yet it makes particular sense given their auspicious beginning as designers, which has become the stuff of fashion world legend. In 2002, their first collection was presented as a joint thesis while they were still at Parsons. Barneys New York bought every piece, signaling the start of what has been a swift and charmed ascension. In 2004, they won the inaugural CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, and in 2007, they took home the award for CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year, which they earned again last year. Known for infusing classic European forms with a slouchy, contemporary sensibility, the designers have seen their clothes become the uniform of choice for slinky downtown girls and women as far apart on the style spectrum as Kim Kardashian and Michelle Obama. Earlier this year, Andrew Rosen, the CEO and founder of Theory, and his partners invested what is said to be between $10 million and $20 million in the company, ensuring that “the boys,” as they are still invariably called in fashion circles, remain in control of their destinies for some time.
On the opposite end from them is the office of Shirley Cook-the only CEO the company has had-whom both McCollough and Hernandez are quick to credit with being instrumental in allowing them to evolve without losing control. The three first met when their social circles intersected during college: Cook was studying religion at New York University, just a few blocks south of Parsons. Her involvement was initially limited to offering a friendly hand, primarily helping out with the accounting. She came on board full-time in 2002 after finding them their first major investor, whom she met while skiing in 2000. As the company gained traction, the three moved into a loft on the edge of Chinatown, where they lived and worked.
Over the years, McCollough and Hernandez have made a point of surrounding themselves with an eclectic mix of independent women who help them envision the ideal personalities for their designs. It is a group that includes downtown fixtures like Sevigny and the photography agent Jen Brill, as well as socially connected ladies like Lauren Santo Domingo, the creator of the website Moda Operandi.
Last year, a macramé basket they fell in love with in India evolved into a skirt, for instance, and blankets they found in New Mexico turned into a handbag. Their current collection, however, grew out of a joint fascination with Karlheinz Weinberger, a Swiss photographer who chronicled Switzerland’s underground rock scene in the sixties.
McCollough and Hernandez rarely provide fodder for gossip columns-the notable exception being in 2009, when an intoxicated Kiefer Sutherland head-butted McCollough at a SoHo bar. Those in fashion circles have made a quiet sport of dissecting their relationship: Some have questioned if, considering that McCollough and Hernandez aren’t overtly affectionate in public and avoid discussing their personal lives in the press, they are, in fact, still together."
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Proenza Schouler Duo Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez Open Up | Screen Tests | W Magazine