2023 was a big year for designer Rachel Scott. Despite launching her brand Diotima only two years earlier, she was runner-up for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, a finalist for the LVMH Prize, and earned the prestigious American emerging designer award at the CFDAs. Reflecting on these big wins, Rachel candidly told Vogue’s market editor Naomi Elizée: “Thank God. I have bills to pay.”
Rachel and Naomi reunited at the Vogue podcast studio to discuss the aesthetics and inspirations behind Diotima. (Both a friend and a fan, Naomi recently wore a crystal-embellished Diotima dress to her birthday party.) To Rachel, her designs exude sensuality; she underscored the intimate craftsmanship behind each piece, handmade by artisans in Jamaica. Crochet is at the heart of her work, and although it’s a technique typically passed down from grandmother to mother in Jamaica, Rachel learned it on her own.
At the end of their conversation, the pair looked back on Rachel’s upbringing in Kingston during the late 1980s and early ’90s, when she saw people wear mesh marinas and Clarks shoes and looked up to dancehall legends Lady Saw (known now as Marion Hall) and Carlene “Dancehall Queen” Smith. It’s that colorful background, she feels, that’s given her an edge.
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