Day five kicks off with the Winner’s Circle

Monday came in clear for snow but full of shows. Three designers—CFDA Awards winners Rachel Scott of Diotima and Henry Zankov plus Trish Wescoat Pound of TWP—exuded a reflective and crafty side, an innovative nature, and a no-nonsense approach to American fashion.
 

Diotima

When Rachel Scott of Diotima, the 2024 CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year, was just culminating the ideas and materials for her Fall/Winter 2025 collection, the result of the 2024 election came to fruition, something that caused the designer to be ill at ease, to put it mildly.

“I was enraged and very angry at the results of the election. The collection hadn’t taken shape, but the direction was reactionary to that; I am not usually like that, but you can’t help but be today,” Scott told FashionNetwork.com behind the scenes of her installation-style presentation held on the 39th floor of a FiDi office tower overlooking the water.

The designer wanted to take a historical perspective on women, particularly the Caribbean woman (Scott, 40, was born in Jamaica), yet didn’t find many images of women of any background. “The history of women was really reduced and flattened; you might find a stoic matriarch or a domestic, generally in her home. I wanted to break that down and give her more complexity and nuance,” she said.

Wanting to learn more, she began collecting images from her community of their families, grandmothers, and ancestors from various decades from the turn of the last century through the ’90s. “It was intimate photos of women in their domestic surroundings; in their gaze and demeanor, I found that nuance and complexity I was looking for. The images were haunting,” she explained.

The team transformed the vast space into a presentation with multiple vignettes, each illuminated by huge spotlights. Sets recalling various rooms of a home took shape from disassembled wooden furniture, stripped of upholstery, and often left askew or broken. A series of stacked mirrors were artfully smashed, adding to the visual impact. Models glided gracefully from one setup to another, interacting with the pieces.

“She is angry, annoyed, and misunderstood, so there is the immediacy of which she puts things on her body,” Scott continued, explaining how the immediacy applied to her process but choosing to drape on the body versus crating rounds of patterns and sketches. “I normally drape the crochet pieces but wanted to do it with different materials.” For example, some Harris tweed styles, a nod to the meeting of the UK and the Caribbean culture, became a dress swathed across one shoulder, revealing her waist while marked by a full skirt. 

The result was intriguing designs without being overly complex. Thus, her domestic abode became a part of her; elements of a quilted satin bedspread are seen on a coat style; a glass jersey dress reminiscent of a 1950s nightgown, constructed by draping, hints at being disheveled and a bit undone in the most sensual of ways.

Her evening attire featured a beaded chemise PJ and bloomers (aka the first feminist undergarment thanks to Amelia Bloomer), with a fringed piano shawl, each richly embellished with the handicraft Scott is known for. But don’t mistake this influence for a frumpy Hausfrau; Scott celebrates a Dionysian woman.

“It is domestic, but it’s not what you think it is; it’s not sweet; it’s sensual, powerful,” Scott explained, noting even her more ‘outside’ tailored looks have this side—an oversized boxy suit jacket with a strong shoulder and a supple waist nod to the military look. However, the epaulets are made of macramé fringe; a boiled knit wool bomber is rounded and soft versus tough leather.

“There is a tension between what you see and don’t see, this inside world and the outside world,” Scott added. One gets the sense that the Diotima woman is also dressing for herself. So be it if she wants to stay home and break shit; in Scott’s view, at least this time, she commands her own vision of herself.

Zankov

Another CFDA winner, Henry Zankov, the 2024 Emerging Designer of the Year, also presented his collection high above Manhattan, this time in a raw space 20-plus floors up, overlooking the city skyline.

Zankov, who also won the 2023 CFDA Vogue Fund, likes to look to the music he listens to; this time, it reflected Warhol Superstar Nico, whose haunting voice fronted many of the Velvet Underground’s tracks.

Thus, in that particular era of downtown New York, Andy and his factory crowd, such as Candy Darling and James Baldwin at Giovanni’s Room, inspired the Fall Winter 2025 collection.

Backstage, Zankov explained the evolution of his offerings: “It’s a similar feeling; we are testing techniques and pushing what we can do with knitwear. It’s a bit preppy with a 60s feel; the color and styling evoke the period, but it’s never literal; it’s just a feeling,” he said.

Still, one could see plenty of styles, such as Edie Sedgewick, Baby Jane Holzer, or Viva Sporting. He focused on a long, lean silhouette evidenced in a long white skirt with coordinating black fringe pinstripes and a floor-length scarf worn with a Turquoise checkered top. Metallic paillettes were reminiscent of the Factory’s aluminum-foil-covered walls and crinkly tinsel material as a natty suit rang true to the era. Other highlights were the mixed color mohair, ‘carwash’ knits, aka those with long flaps as a fringe, and strong solid combos like teal blue and red. The designer snuck in a few wovens to balance certain looks.

Entitled “I Just Can’t Help Myself,” Zankov called out some of his inner circle, a dear friend Chloe and life partner Andrew as perhaps some of the “Subversive Spirits” he called out in show notes that he feels are “more important than ever.”  He is also known to collaborate with fellow designers such as Presley Oldham. It sounds like he has his own little creative factory in the making.

TWP

Trish Wescoat Pound, Creative Director of TWP, titled her Fall Winter 2025 collection “The Incredible Lightness of Fashion,” a riff on Nietzsche’s philosophy, which also inspired Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” which took place during the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The principle relates to the universal burdens of life, aka heaviness, and the individual who lives in lightness, perhaps by not overthinking life and living for the moment and beauty.

This is pretty heady stuff for a sportswear-driven collection by the former Theory alum and Haute Hippie founder, who professes to only “make clothes that women love.” In that sense, it tracks with her Theory career: a reinterpretation of classics given a dose of ‘Je ne sais quoi.’  Through styling, layering, and exploring some different shapes, the designer seemed to push the idea forward.

Full disclosure: a lot of the true nuance of the design will be most evidenced in the showroom or fitting room, where one can get up close. From a distance, though, some of the strongest ideas were the outerwear, such as throw-it-over-everything toppers, from shearlings to double-face wools and rain gear in various lengths. The designer favored floor-skimming lengths in the coats as well as the satin and sequin dress styles (the lightness?) that looked cool and editorial but will prove a challenge navigating city life.

TWP knits are hardly created to be worn as created. Thus, sweater dressing was a sartorial exercise: a scarf as a belt, a sweater half-worn over a dress, or layers upon layers swirled around the shoulders—an emerging trend seen at Brandon Maxwell, Prabal Gurung, and Todd Snyder, among others. Here, the heaviness sunk in, but it is a cold-weather dressing season. Not to mention, the times are being felt deeply.

Wescoat subscribes to “clothes that don’t scream but aren’t shy.”  The assurance was mainly in the form of styling, which piled on the ideas and, in some cases, was overbearing, almost as if overcompensating (the button-on puffer at the waist was just plain awkward; ditto the Jodhpur style knicker, which may be a hard sell.)

Her ideology isn’t alone in the marketplace; these concepts have been prevalent thus far in New York. (some think it’s the Row-effect, but isn’t it the Theory and Ralph effect, too?) Fortunately, with former boss Andrew Rosen in her corner, her retail presence is also weighty.