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Diotima unveils ‘Matriarch’

J’can CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year Rachel Scott debuts new work at NYFW

Published:Monday | February 17, 2025 | 10:11 AMOmar Tomlinson - Contributor
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“I am researching images of black women that came before us and paved the way: the auntie, the trans mothers, the grandma, the matriarch,” Scott told her online followers, her creative interest piqued following the United States presidential elections
Paige Powell
“I am researching images of black women that came before us and paved the way: the auntie, the trans mothers, the grandma, the matriarch,” Scott told her online followers, her creative interest piqued following the United States presidential elections which had Democratic Party contender Kamala Harris losing to Republican Donald Trump.
Diotima founder and creative director Rachel Scott (right) and stylist Marika-Ella Ames.
Contributed
Diotima founder and creative director Rachel Scott (right) and stylist Marika-Ella Ames.
For her latest design output – which had its show presentation on Day 5 of NYFW – Scott drew inspiration from crowdsourced photos she received after putting out a request last November for images of women spanning different eras.
Paige Powell
For her latest design output – which had its show presentation on Day 5 of NYFW – Scott drew inspiration from crowdsourced photos she received after putting out a request last November for images of women spanning different eras.
The colour palette for the ‘Matriarch’ collection is anchored in black and nightshade, with soft contrasts in pearl, butter, anthurium, slate, marine and iron oxide.
Paige Powell
The colour palette for the ‘Matriarch’ collection is anchored in black and nightshade, with soft contrasts in pearl, butter, anthurium, slate, marine and iron oxide.
Rachel Scott (right) accepting the American Womenswear Designer of the Year honours from actress Da’Vine Joy Randolph at the 2024 Council of Fashion Designers of America Fashion Awards ceremony held last October at the American Museum of Natural History
Rachel Scott (right) accepting the American Womenswear Designer of the Year honours from actress Da’Vine Joy Randolph at the 2024 Council of Fashion Designers of America Fashion Awards ceremony held last October at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. 
Scott’s new collection retains the sensuality which has come to define the brand founded in 2021 during the pandemic.
Paige Powell
Scott’s new collection retains the sensuality which has come to define the brand founded in 2021 during the pandemic.
“This collection is filled with ideas and a different energy,” hailed ‘The Cut’ magazine’s fashion scribe Cathy Horyn in her show review. “It began because Scott looked where most people were not looking.”
Paige Powell
“This collection is filled with ideas and a different energy,” hailed ‘The Cut’ magazine’s fashion scribe Cathy Horyn in her show review. “It began because Scott looked where most people were not looking.”
For this deeply personal collection, Scott centred on the matriarch as a symbol of power, nuance and resilience.
Paige Powell
For this deeply personal collection, Scott centred on the matriarch as a symbol of power, nuance and resilience.
The presentation’s beauty direction embraced transformation. Hairstylist Joey George deconstructed pin-straight locks with exposed rollers, while make-up artists kept faces bare except for heightened blush.
Paige Powell
The presentation’s beauty direction embraced transformation. Hairstylist Joey George deconstructed pin-straight locks with exposed rollers, while make-up artists kept faces bare except for heightened blush.
Diotima’s signature crochet – seen here – was present in the new design work, which also included glass jersey tops embroidered with black roses and bloomers in fluid wool and silk georgette, and bomber jackets in soft-boiled wool knit.
Paige Powell
Diotima’s signature crochet – seen here – was present in the new design work, which also included glass jersey tops embroidered with black roses and bloomers in fluid wool and silk georgette, and bomber jackets in soft-boiled wool knit.
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The lofty, artistic ambitions of Jamaican fashion designer Rachel Scott’s Diotima Fall-Winter 2025 collection reveal, which she titled ‘Matriarch’, was appropriately venued last Monday in the skyscraper-dotted Financial District of downtown Manhattan during New York Fashion Week.

Inspiration for the Jamaican creative’s preview for the next season of ready-to-wear womenswear was stirred after the results of the recent presidential elections in the United States after the Democratic Party’s candidate Kamala Harris – famously of Jamaican heritage via her economist and academic father Donald J. Harris – lost to Republican Donald Trump. The former and sitting president’s triumph promptly elicited a wave of introspection by Scott, who had secured the American Womenswear Designer of the Year win at the 2024 Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Fashion Awards.

Taking to her online community of followers back in November, she called on them to submit photos “of the black women who came before us”, with the received images that spanned decades to the 1950s, serving as the springboard for Diotima’s narrative of her gorgeous collection of daytime and eveningwear pieces. Paying homage to the matriarchy, and the female form, Scott unveiled a quilted satin cape and cowl skirt that referenced bedspreads, strong-shouldered blazers with anti-epaulettes in macramé, pile-embroidered crinkle chiffon dresses, and slick chemise tops. Also brought to life from the designer’s sketch pad were crochet mesh knits in wool with opaque crystal embellishments, a deconstructed Harris Tweed dress and skirt, oversized trousers with back pleats, and crystal mesh capelets.

Anointed by the fashion elite as one of the industry’s most insightful and exciting designers working today, Scott’s new work was celebrated by critics. In her post-show review, American Vogue writer Laia Garcia-Furtado raved, “Season after season, it’s extraordinary to see Scott expand and develop the universe of the Diotima woman ... [she] finds a and bring the women she dresses along for the ride.”

Meanwhile, Cathy Horyn of New York Magazine’s The Cut, hailed the former Campion College alum and Colgate University art history and French major’s design work as “one of the few designers [at NYFW] who took real risks during the shows ... she’s curious about how ordinary black women have historically been represented over several centuries”.

Similarly, New York Times fashion director and chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman was laudatory in her assessment in her show recap: “[Scott’s] ability to find the harmony, not merely the tension in the juxtaposition of kitchen-table craft and C-suite uniform is, in part, what made her the CFDA Womenswear Designer in 2024.”

“It’s hard for me to describe a specific woman as the Diotima woman because there are so many kinds of women and so many types of people that wear the brand,” Scott told this reporter in our sit-down back in January last year, noting that the brand had long transcended just womenswear. “I think what links everyone is a spirit, an attitude, but you have to be a bad b**** to wear it. Someone that appreciates craft, someone who appreciates savoir-faire, someone that is confident and sensual and comfortable and confident in their sensuality,” she said.

The Sunday Gleaner is on fashion watch with the proud daughter of The Rock’s NYFW reveal, with exclusive photos from photog Paige Powell.

lifestyle@gleanerjm.com