Proenza Schouler -- Celebrity Style Fashion and Footwear

This modern luxury label offers an edgy, youthful take on upscale dressing. The design team of Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough-self-proclaimed "dorks"-has only been in business since 2002, but they've already enjoyed numerous hit collections, and a rep as one of fashion's most talked about labels. The duo met in design school, worked with Michael Kors and Marc Jacobs respectively, then partnered on their graduation project; the rest is history. It helps that their talent matches their hype, and that their collections showcase their skillful detailing. Some of the line's most current pieces, sleek and minimal silhouettes with a soulful cheekiness, are redolent of the mod-ness of Courrèges, (a black-and-white cashmere mini-dress), or Paco Rabanne (a chain mail tank.) --www.nymag.com.

Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough met in 1999, while in design school at Parsons. They partnered up for their thesis project, calling it by their mothers' maiden names, Proenza Schouler, and a collection was born. Hernandez, who hails from Cuban Miami, originally pondered becoming a doctor, while McCollough, from suburban New Jersey, was intent on blowing glass. Luckily, they found each other: The design duo were presented with the CFDA's Perry Ellis Award for new talent in 2003 and have shown to critical acclaim with each subsequent season. --www.nymag.com.

NEW YORK, September 7, 2007 - Three days old now, this reshuffled fashion week has gotten off to a less-than-inspired start. But leave it to Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough to pump some blood into the proceedings. Their new silhouette is decidedly body-conscious: With cinched belts everywhere and just one pair of pants on the runway at tonight's venue, the Park Avenue Armory, Spring is all about the waist and the legs-the longer the better.

The show began with a short black dress topped off by both a hemp waistcoat and a second, more abbreviated vest. Following on were a number of looks with a vaguely military air, complete with cavalry hats by fashion's new favorite milliner, Albertus Swanepoel. From there, the clothes took on a more tribal feel. Black-and-white striped jackets were layered over shirtdresses and long-sleeved tees, and the bodice of one dress was beaded in a zebra pattern. Altogether, things were less posh and more street than last season, and, for that reason, the collection seemed truer to the duo's own personal style.

Hernandez and McCollough said they wanted to explore the idea of contrasts, "something organic and man-made, primitive and refined." And thanks to the fact that Valentino Fashion Group bought a 45 percent stake in the company in July, Proenza Schouler can afford to really up the ante on the refinement front. The gold-leaf silk pieces that closed the parade-Liya Kebede's double-breasted sleeveless coat-dress was the best-are as luxe as it gets, and will no doubt require a socialite's or celebrity's hefty wallet. Demi Moore swooped out after the show with, count them, four bodyguards in tow. The boys should ask to borrow a couple of those: There are going to be plenty of eager ladies elbowing to wear these clothes. --www.style.com.

Young and sporty, with a somewhat mod nod to cheeky sixties pop fashion icons. Tailored coats in lush menswear pattern prints, thin pencil skirts, color-blocked chiffon evening gowns cinched with satin belts, and sleek minimal silhouettes that mostly come in dark neutrals like bronze, battleship gray and military green. --www.nymag.com.

Two Stylish: The designers behind Proenza Schouler have won the praise of their peers-and a celebrity following. Not bad for two 24-year-olds only one year out of Parsons.

Once upon a time-in 2000, to be exact-at a dingy Miami airport gate, a 21-year-old aspiring designer named Lazaro Hernandez almost fell right over.

His idol was striding purposefully toward the very same plane he was about to board.

"Oh, my God, Mom," he said. His eyes grew as wide and as round as the buttons on a Courrèges coat. "That's Anna Wintour."

"She's just a person," his mother answered in Spanish as she waved good-bye. She'd never heard of Anna Wintour. "Go talk to her."

Our hero wimped out. But he did ask a stewardess to pass the editor a napkin on which he'd written a note about himself, his love of fashion, and his admiration for her.

A few weeks had passed when, out of the blue, Hernandez got a call from Michael Kors's office. "Anna Wintour says you should work here," he was told. And so he did.

Three years later, Hernandez and his partner, Jack McCollough, a classmate from Parsons School of Design, are onstage at the New York Public Library accepting the Perry Ellis Award for new talent from the CFDA. But while it's tempting to tell the story of Proenza Schouler as a Lana Turner-at-Schwab's fairy tale-particularly when the stars are so fresh-faced and bright-eyed-to do so would be to overlook the fact that they have skill as well as luck: the elusive knack of designing just what New Yorkers are desperate for.

The story really begins in 1999, when Hernandez and McCollough met at Parsons, after tinkering in different fields. Hernandez is originally from Miami-Cuban Miami. Though he had fallen in love with fashion while observing the clients in his mother's beauty salon, he went to college with the thought of becoming a doctor. McCollough grew up in suburban New Jersey, and as much as he liked to sew, it was with the intention of becoming a glass blower that he enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute.

At Parsons, the two became instant friends. While Hernandez supplemented his class work with the internship at Michael Kors, McCollough took a similar position at Marc Jacobs. During their senior years, they worked together at United Bamboo and found that they were in agreement about the things that matter most to designers: silhouette, color, proportion.

"They're so about New York," says Julie Gilhart, Fashion Director for Barneys. "You know how the city makes some people seem so tired out? It seems to fill them with energy."

"A lot of people were cutting up T-shirts," Hernandez says of his classmates. "We wanted to return to the craft."

They got permission to do their thesis project together, and crafted a moniker out of their mothers' maiden names. The look Proenza Schouler showed at their graduation last May was glamorous yet hard, pared down to the essentials: a pencil skirt, a bolero jacket that hit right below the breast, and all of it in a palette of dirty pastels just right for a city summer. Peter D. Arnold, the head of the CFDA, saw the collection and was so impressed that he convinced Julie Gilhart, the fashion director for Barneys, to take a look.

"It all seemed so professional," Gilhart says. "It did not seem like the work of students." Plus, she continues, "they're so much about New York. You know how the city makes some people seem so tired out? It seems to fill them with energy." Although the Barneys buying season was officially over, she bought the whole collection. The duo borrowed some money from their parents and managed to produce the small run.

Barneys asked for a spring collection as well. Hernandez and McCollough were worrying over how to produce it when a friend introduced them to a German venture capitalist who offered to back the label. A few other stores (Linda Dresner, Jeffrey) picked up on the buzz and bought that collection, too, though they'd never had a proper show.

"A lot of the clothing today that gets very hyped, I go see it and I'm like, The emperor has no clothes!," says Jeffrey's Jeffrey Kalinsky. "But this is clothing fit for royalty."

This February, during Fashion Week, they had their first full runway show. The collection played with their now-signature ideas of proportion (shrunken pea coats, pencil skirts), color (browns, army greens, battleship grays), and silhouette (sleek, minimal)-clothes with the refinement of Narciso Rodriguez and the edge of Helmut Lang. And they had developed a following: Danielle Steel's two teenage daughters bought the entire rack right out of Barneys.

"Carine Roitfeld came the day after the show," Hernandez says on a spring afternoon in the Chinatown loft the pair work and live in. He inhales his cigarette coolly and then bursts into a fit of smoky giggles. In fact, the French Vogue editor was quoted after the show by one of the Fashion Week dailies: "I'm going to order everything," she'd said, ducking into her Town Car.

"She modeled the whole collection for us!" he continues. "She walked up and down, like it was a catwalk."

McCollough blushes and looks down, trying to cover his smile.

Right after the CFDA awards, when Zac Posen was freaking Claire Danes on the dance floor, the boys of Proenza Schouler were celebrating a bit more quietly. Drinking champagne, yes, but skipping the table dancing. "We're such dorks!" they insist.

"These are not just stylists," André Leon Talley says, spitting out the word like bad caviar. "Their greatest strength is their appreciation of the construction of clothes: the tailoring, the linings, the seams-all are done perfectly, and that's what makes them great."

"And," he adds, perhaps in a reference to where it all began, "they send beautiful, handwritten notes."

Photo Credit: Matched Pair: Jack McCollough, left, and Lazaro Hernandez in their Chinatown loft. (Photographed by Ben Baker.) Published Jun 16, 2003. --www.nymag.com.

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