Diotima Spring/Summer 2027 Women’s Collection by Rachel Scott

Diotima Spring/Summer 2027 / SS27 Women’s Collection by Rachel Scott at New York Fashion Week

“Diotima SS27 / Spring/Summer 2027 collection began with the sea. I found myself returning to it, in awe of its overwhelming beauty and power, but also thinking about all that it holds – histories of passage, displacement and unimaginable loss – and all that it connects. Across the Caribbean, the same water that separates the islands binds them together. It is a pathway and a burial ground, a physical and spiritual realm. But this sea is also transforming. As its waters warm, its colors, textures and rhythms change with them.

I imagined a woman moving from island to island, across the Caribbean archipelago. With her were spirits and divinities – La Sirène, Mami Wata, Oshun. As I followed her, past and present began to overlap. Sometimes she appeared as a woman from another century, inside the colonial plantation house. Or as Suzanne Césaire, using writing as a form of subversion. And then, as a woman now. She carries something of all of them.

Traces of each woman slipped into the collection and materiality began to echo everything I had been thinking about. The sea took on different forms – through fabric, texture and colour. Silk twill, cut into bias strips, is layered into waves that wrap around the body. Light, fluid flounces bring sculptural asymmetry and movement, sometimes layered one over another. Dense organza manipulation absorbs and reflects light, mixed with crochet to reveal glimpses of skin. Chino twill is cut into strips and reattached to form an open lattice, recalling sargassum or muddied water. Silhouettes are sinuous and fluid, sometimes full and long, sometimes short in the back.

I kept returning to that woman from another century. She took what was available to her and turned it into adornment. Vintage metal napkin rings appear at the shoulder, waist and wrist. Folded fabric resembles napkins. Waisted tailoring carries something historical without belonging to any one period. Crisp tropical wool, recalling the internal structure of a blazer, is cut into cropped shapes with sharp shoulders or combined with crochet and organza. Silk wool is structured yet fluid, with high, nipped waists and fluted sweeps. The woman of now takes what she wants and mixes it all together.

The palette follows the sea in its many states – deep blues, muted greens, sand tones, the brown of water churned by hurricanes and torrential rain. The Caribbean is so often imagined through crystalline blue water, but the sea is never only one color. As the waters warm and sargassum gathers at the surface, the colors and textures of the sea change.

These changes are not only environmental. They touch communities, knowledge and living traditions. To the people, spirits and waters that connect us, for all they carry and all that must be protected.”