Rachel Scott was technically named creative director of Proenza Schouler just days before last September’s New York Fashion Week show, but today? Today felt like the real beginning. This was the first collection she actually touched from start to finish—no handover energy, no transitional fog—stepping fully into the role left behind by Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who’ve since packed up for Paris and the Loewe dream. The room showed up for her, too. Maria Cornejo. Veronica Leoni from Calvin Klein. Raul Lopez of Luar. A proper designer roll call. Which feels even more impressive when you remember Scott has her own Diotima show in four days. Casual.

She might genuinely be the busiest person at New York Fashion Week, so it tracks that she described this season’s Proenza woman as “deathly punctual and always on time—but today she was running late.” Same. Explaining how her vision shifts from McCollough and Hernandez’s, she talked about that old Proenza woman as someone you could see but not quite touch—like there was glass between you and her. Perfect. Impeccable. Slightly terrifying. And honestly? Fair.

For years, Proenza sat right at the center of New York fashion’s inner circle—the show you had to be at. That kind of polish can feel aspirational… or alienating, depending on where you’re standing. Scott seems intent on cracking the door open. “I want to give her more texture and complexity,” she said. “Little peeks of eroticism—but totally self-authored.” Not messy for messiness’ sake. Human on purpose.

At first glance, the opening looks didn’t scream chaos. A sleeveless dress with a sculptural, rounded skirt. A pair of tidy midi skirt suits. Very together. Very she has her life under control. But then the slippage started. Asymmetric lapels on an ivory coat. Buttons placed just off enough to give a long-sleeve dress that draped, forgiving feel. Darts exposed on the outside of a blazing red evening sheath—like the garment was showing its work. Perfectly imperfect. The eroticism crept in quietly, too: pleats blooming beneath a cutaway hip, a flash of skin through a ruffle-edged slit in a pair of trousers. Blink and you’d miss it. Which is kind of the point.

Scott’s Diotima background showed up in the knits—in a good way. Crochet isn’t just a skill for her; it’s a language. There was a Donegal knit double-breasted skirt suit with a little flippy peplum in back (sweet, slightly nerdy, kind of charming), and a clingy ribbed knit polo dress that leaned fully into sensual without feeling try-hard. The earthier, more tactile mood she talked about landed hardest at the end, with the orchid prints. Scott grows orchids herself. She photographed them at night, hand-painted the image, then printed it so the sloppy edges of the photo stayed visible at the hem. You could see the hand. The process. The imperfection. “I like this play between the hand and the digital at Proenza,” she said—and you could feel that tension humming through the clothes.

She’s clearly done her homework on what Proenza has been, respected the codes, understood the legacy. Now the real question is how much space she gives herself to get strange. As she settles in, it feels like the brand would only benefit from letting a little more of her wildness leak through.