Diotima’s Rachel Scott on building a brand world

To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here. About halfway through our interview, Rachel Scott’s doorbell rings. “More flowers,” the Diotima founder and designer says with a smile. “There’s a garden in my kitchen.” Scott has had a busy couple of weeks. When we speak, it’s exactly one week after she won emerging designer of the year at the CFDA Fashion Awards. (After the call, a photo of the flowers appeared on Diotima’s Instagram story, thanking new i-D magazine owner Karlie Kloss.) “I was shocked but super excited,” Scott says of the win. She was up against Bach Mai, Connor McKnight, Tanner Fletcher’s Tanner Richie and Fletcher Kasell and Puppets And Puppets’s Carly Mark for the award, which last year went to Elena Velez. The Jamaican-born designer might have been taken by surprise, but it was anticipated by many of her industry peers. “I, along with so many others, was rooting for her,” says Sherri McMullen, founder of Oakland’s McMullen boutique, which began stocking Diotima early on. Scott founded her brand two and a half years ago during the pandemic. In that short time, Scott developed a distinct design language. Best known for her handmade designs that mix crochet and tailoring and her unique spins on traditional Jamaican garments such as doilies and mesh marinas, Scott hones in on Caribbean craft and style while making a case for the universality of these pieces. It’s this distinctiveness that sets up Scott’s ambition to build a world around the Diotima brand — to bring this tension-ridden design language forth beyond the clothes through real spaces that transcend fashion. The designer credits the physical distance from her day job (VP of design at Rachel Comey at the time) for providing the impetus to take the leap. Scott realised the time was right to act on the gap she saw in the market. “Because of everything happening culturally, people were hungry for other voices,” she says, referring to the conversations generated by the Black Lives Matter movement in the US. She started the brand with zero funding and a goal to build a brand on engagement that is, as she puts it, not extractive. Scott seeks to tie her brand to the Caribbean by operating with those on the ground: the craftspeople in Jamaica with the expertise to carry out the work. “There are other brands that reference the Caribbean, but maybe don’t work with Caribbeans or Jamaicans directly,” Scott says. “I was happy to see them do that, because visibility and representation are important. But I found that this element of actual engagement was missing. At the same time, it wouldn’t have been possible without those who came before me.” Diotima, it seems, struck a chord. In the last year, in addition to her CFDA win, Scott was a runner-up for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, an LVMH Prize finalist and nominee for a Latin American Fashion Award. Scott is grateful for the accolades and for the people who have worked with her in building the brand. “It’s almost like an investment in a way because they’re developing with me without necessarily hoping for a large order,” she says of the brand’s retailers and manufacturing partners. The owner of a factory Scott works with in India has, for instance, flown the designer out twice to work on product development. “They’ve already seen growth in a short time. So it’s promising.” McMullen is assured by Scott’s industry experience. “Rachel has been designing for many years, so she's not new to this business and it shows in her work and business savvy,” McMullen says. “The Caribbean spirit runs deep in her brand and I’m very drawn to that balance of sensual and chill style — and so are our clients.” Scott recognises this and credits her experience in the industry with her ability to pursue growth. “Being on a design team is different than coming out of school and launching a brand,” she says. “There are people that I work with that I’ve worked with for like 10 years.” And she’s tapping these contacts. “I have relationships with people that I’ve worked with for a long time, who I trust and who trust in my vision, and who have an incredible level of craft,” she says. “But I need to find a way to be able to keep the vision strong while opening up in order to scale. It’s impossible to scale with just crochet as a category because that’s going to be a niche brand. And I see this [as] so much bigger than that.” Scott’s crystal mesh is a manifestation of this. It’s a chunky cotton yarn adorned with crystals that Scott describes as “blasting the craft” into the garment. It has been a strong seller, she says, and is faster to make than crochet garments while remaining infused with craft through each sparkling embellishment. This fusing of design and methodologies is central to Diotima — and originates from necessity. Another core aesthetic is the brand’s crochet mixed with tailoring — which, Scott says, was born out of the desire to both work with local artisans and pursue international growth. “In order for me to have a global fashion business that was tied to the fashion schedule, I had to become really creative about how I worked with crochet,” she says. “That was the only reason I got to that combination. And it became a big part of my design language.” With this approach at the heart of the brand, Scott is continuing to develop this language while eyeing DTC (direct-to-consumer) expansion to balance out her growing wholesale roster. She’s also thinking about how to build out the Diotima world in the form of physical spaces — both in New York and, down the line, in Kingston, Jamaica. “The business is working towards profitability,” she says. “Everything is being reinvested into growth. When you look at the numbers, it’s crazy, from one year to the next.” Diotima’s revenue has grown 50 per cent since 2022 through to today and saw 50 per cent growth from 2021 to 2022. The brand generates roughly $1 million in revenue. Non-extractive engagement: Savoir faire and craft Through Diotima, Scott seeks to offer a more expansive notion of luxury and craft — something fashion has long failed to properly acknowledge, she argues, up until very recently. “Obviously ‘made in Italy’ is incredible,” she says. “But I struggle with the fact that that was the only thing ever mentioned.” A brand like Dior showing in India reflects how this has evolved. “It wouldn’t have happened when I started,” Scott says. “It wouldn’t have happened even five years ago.” By working with this expansiveness in mind, Scott has developed a product that is intrinsically tied to Jamaica while looking outward. “The way I work with crochet is very unusual,” she says. “It’s tied to traditional crochet in Jamaica — the doily is something that’s in every household. Every grandmother teaches their daughter and their granddaughter to do it.” Scott is aware of the need to push the brand forwards, and works to avoid traps of nostalgia. Scott draws on classic Jamaican clothing and styles, such as the doily, mesh marina and broderie anglaise techniques — but works not only to develop her own interpretation of these, but to move the needle on what they can be. “I’m trying to be true to these references without just rehashing the same thing,” she says. “Nobody needs another string vest.” So her crystal, open-stitch pieces play on the concept of the mesh marina, often in multi-coloured stripes like the vest that, as she puts it, everyone has. Broderie anglaise, another technique Scott uses, is very present in Jamaica’s domestic zone — which, she notes, is intertwined with the country’s colonial history. “How could I do that without celebrating the colonial history?” Jumbo-scale broderie anglaise is Scott’s answer: a crisp, tailored shirt, or structured dress, with cutouts evocative of the typically-intricate technique. (Scott even wore the former to the CVFF ceremony.) “You need to feel the hand in it, but it needs to also feel modern,” Scott says. “What I’ve always found most interesting is savoir faire and craft, and trying to think about it outside of the very narrow idea of where that comes from.” It’s a conscious shift away from craft as aesthetic, instead leaning into the sensuality of handmade items. Scott credits Loewe and Bottega Veneta as having helped to foster this new, modern understanding of craft. Both brands ranked in top spots in Lyst’s Q3 index (second and fourth, respectively), pointing towards consumer receptiveness to such an approach. Evening out the scales For shoppers to like the brand, they have to be able to find it. Scott puts Diotima’s rapid growth partly down to its wholesale profile. “I wouldn’t have a brand if it wasn’t for wholesale,” she says. Moda Operandi was a first major stockist; McMullen has stocked the brand since its second season; Bergdorf Goodman followed suit for season three. “They’ve been so supportive with lots of organic marketing,” Scott, who was in the BG Radar programme, shares. Wholesale is great for adjacency — at Bergdorfs, Diotima is sandwiched between Loewe and Proenza Schouler. But it’s less great for margins. Last year, wholesale was 96 per cent of Diotima’s business. “Which is wonderful,” Scott says. “But we’re working towards profitability, and to start to make money, we need a more even split between DTC and wholesale in order to have those higher margins to support business and growth.” To date, Diotima’s e-commerce has been what Scott calls “on the side” due to a lack of capacity. Now, there’s a dedicated team member to build it out. She is also opening a studio space on Elizabeth Street in New York’s Soho neighbourhood with her CVFF runner-up prize money. It will be part-studio, part-retail space, a destination that Scott can invite clients to for appointments. She also hopes to open it up to the public on weekends. A beta version of a store, Scott muses, to test the waters. The designer hopes that a DTC push will also help wholesale. “The more touch points, the more it’s being pushed, the more that I can generate in terms of assets, moments and experiences for the customer. It’s this world building that I think is important.” World building with physical spaces By building out the Diotima world, Scott hopes to better educate more consumers on what the brand is about. “I think people don’t really understand,” she says. “They’re like, ‘oh, it’s Jamaican, it’s crochet — so resortwear?’ I’m like, well, it’s a little bit more than that.” To educate, Diotima is focused on expanding its presence: via DTC, but also through increased US retail partners and international wholesale expansion (Net-a-Porter is set for SS24, as are Milan and Tokyo stockists). Down the line, Scott wants to take this world building back home, to open a space in Jamaica. But it wouldn’t just be a retail space, she flags. “I’ve always been obsessed with the Fondazione [Prada],” she says. “I think in fashion there’s a very unique opportunity that we have to play a part in culture in general.” Scott envisions a cultural hub where Diotima can host screenings of third-wave seventies African and Caribbean films; hold exhibitions that aren’t necessarily art related, but delve into Jamaica’s history. “That’s the thing with the Caribbean — there isn’t really an archive. Part of that comes from the colonial history, part from [a lack of] funding.” The Diotima vision is “the opportunity to have a space — whatever that may look like for a small, independent brand — that could function as a cultural space as well as an atelier so people can get an education in some of the crafts”, she adds. This notion gets at the now well-documented rationale behind the Diotima name, for which Scott looked to German philosopher Herbert Marcuse’s interpretation of Plato’s Diotima Symposium character: the figure represents, he says, the potential to sublimate desire in a non-repressive way. “There’s a sense of potential for collaboration,” Scott says. “What better starting point than love and the desire to make something new that’s not repressive? It feels revolutionary, in a way — very radical.” Key takeaway: Rachel Scott’s Diotima embraces tensions — between crochet and tailoring; local and global; referencing the past and pushing forward. The goal is to strike a fine balance that enables a new kind of luxury — one that is expansive, but not extractive. After winning the CFDA emerging designer of the year award, Scott is expanding Diotima’s international scope, doubling down on DTC and, one day, returning to the brand’s Jamaican roots to create a physical space that is not just for fashion, but will give back to the wider cultural context from which Diotima emerged. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. More from this author: Why doesn’t anyone know where to shop anymore? Night at the museum: Catherine Holstein, Willy Chavarria and Rachel Scott win at the 2023 CFDA Awards Advisry’s Keith Herron is growing up

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