S1 Special Edition

THURSDAY NEWSLETTER FROM ANDREA BATILLA

PROENZA SCHOULER AND THE HUMAN FACTOR

The fact that Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, creative directors and owners of the American brand Proenza Schouler, are likely to replace J.W. Anderson at Loewe is, in itself, a piece of news that doesn’t hold much weight. It’s the kind of thing that interests the bubble of industry insiders who get excited or disappointed in the same way people react to sports transfer rumors on sports newspapers.

Hernandez and McCollough are competent professionals, skilled at capturing the zeitgeist and turning it into something commercial. At Loewe, they’ll bring no surprises and will make the brand irrelevant again, if they even go there. But that’s not the point.

The interesting news is that the two designers have decided to step away from their own brand, leaving it to a yet-to-be-determined designer. After 22 years and 350 global clients, this dynamic duo has decided they have better things to do, redirecting their personal energy toward other projects.

Not long ago ago, there was news of Glenn Martens leaving Y/Project brand, which, in his absence, has found neither replacements nor investors and will therefore close its doors. Y/Project wasn’t Martens’ brand; it was created in 2010 by Yohan Serfaty with investor Gilles Elalouf. In 2013, after Serfaty’s sudden death, the brand was entrusted to Glenn Martens, who essentially made it what it is today.

These two pieces of news, so close together and so similar, deserve a brief reflection.