On Monday, September 9, I found myself in the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood while awaiting New York designer Diotima’s Spring 2025 presentation. As I followed a group of fellow attendees up a flight of stairs, I inched further away from the cacophony of honking horns and wailing sirens and moved closer to a warmer energy. Set in an industrial loft illuminated by floor-to-ceiling windows, I entered the enchanting world of Rachel Scott's Diotima.
“The collection emerged from a vivid Caribbean dream,” the Jamaican-born designer's show notes read. “Memories of revivalist ritual dances by the banks of roaring rivers, scenes of Sunday church in the rolling hills, and dancehall street parties meld into a singular vision.”
Raised in Kingston, Jamaica's capital, by a mother who owned a clothing boutique and a father who built furniture, Scott grew up with craftsmanship in her DNA. In past interviews, she's explained her penchant for sewing her own clothing as a teenager and how style was an integral part of her life.
After leaving the island in the early 2000s, the burgeoning creative studied French Philosophy at Colgate University in New York and later attended the Instituto Marangoni in Milan, where she pursued fashion design. After graduation, she worked her way up from an assistant designer at Costume National to the VP of design at Rachel Comey before eventually launching Diotima in 2021.
Now, as the creative director and founder of her own label, she centers her clothing line around the sights and sounds of her cherished heritage. This act of love has earned Scott the 2023 CFDA's Emerging Designer of the Year award and paved the way for her to dress stars like Gabrielle Union, Keke Palmer, and Letitia Wright.
Throughout her journey, Scott has learned to pay homage to her culture without being too literal. “I’m super careful with referencing things,” she once told British Vogue. "There are moments of direct connections, but I think more than anything, it’s a spirit, an energy.”
While standing amongst Diotima’s Spring 2025 presentation, that’s exactly what I felt—a sense of electrifying energy I wanted to bottle up and hold onto forever. Scott’s assortment of ethereal pieces, a collection titled “Dejà vu,” illustrated the nuanced brilliance of Caribbean culture.
While posing against the backdrop of red sticks, palm leaves, and burning candles, models wore gauzy organza halter tops styled with matching skirts. Scott noted this was a deliberate nod to dancehall culture, a genre of popular Jamaican music that originated in the late 1970s. Others had their hair tucked behind fiery red headscarves, which the designer used to reference “signifiers of mysterious [Jamaican] rituals.”
Diotima’s captivating presentation also showcased handmade crochet, which has beautifully anchored the label since its inception. A glance at past collections will reveal a cropped button-down shirt plastered with crochet stripes, a viscose dress covered in crochet overlays, and a plunging blazer stitched with crochet cutouts.
Admiring Diotima’s spring '25 collection, I saw the brand’s signature netted fabric on a blue skirt trimmed in flowy fringe—even that small detail had a deeper meaning. The show notes explained that the fluid movement was intended to capture the essence of seaweed swaying in the Caribbean Sea.
Although Scott honored her distinct design codes, she experimented with new and inspiring materials. I noticed one model sashaying around the loft in a slinky knit ensemble decorated with metallic paillettes that resembled Hellshire oyster shells. Other fresh styles included a soft teal dress drenched in folds of draped fabric, a billowing cotton top, and oversized denim bottoms enhanced with her signature embroidery—all of which subtly told the story of the Jamaican landscape in their own ways.
Although Scott’s brand has undoubtedly evolved over time, its ethos—rooted in lived experience—has remained the same. While I stood there, I was reminded of how refreshing it is to encounter styles that tell a real story. Especially nowadays, when fleeting aesthetics and cores have permeated every street corner (and social media feed). Designs that have a strong sense of perspective feel genuinely sacred, and it's clear that Scott isn’t distracted by the noise of the latest trends; she’s focused on her own vision.
