DIOTIMA

Diotima AW25

words by Kerane Marcellus

The British-Jamaican designer showcases her latest Fall/Winter 2025 presentation featuring an intimate and empathetic message. 

Last November, designer Rachel Scott put out a community call in search of imagery that conveyed the nuanced lives of Black women. The response was overwhelming with imagery sourced from the 80s, 70s, and 50s of Black matriarchs throughout their lives. Youthful glows to intimate stoic wrinkled faces filled her archive to set a foundation for her next collection. Aunties, grandmas, trans mothers—the matriarch is seen whole. 

Over the past two years, Scott’s presence in the fashion world has become widely known. Going from emerging to rising to established, Diotima’s ubiquity can’t be denied. It’s only been four years since Scott founded her brand named after the Greek philosopher who inspired Socrates’ musings on love. From then, she won the coveted American Womenswear Designer of the Year Award from the CFDA, becoming the first Black woman to win. Before then, she Scott won the Empowered Vision Award which included $100,000 to expand her brand and a year-long mentorship program. A full circle was presented when she won the CFDA award years later. Her brand has become synonymous with excellence and intention, making her one of the few designers in America to push boundaries with textures, materials, and classic silhouettes. 

Setting a scene, the presentation is placed in a large upscale space in the New York’s Financial District. Submerged in the design codes of Scott, Diotima showcases signature knit macramé dresses with cutouts on the sides and breastbone in romantic reds and black. Textures are a throughline in the collection with opaque black crystals added to billowing drop waist dresses and beading along the sides of trousers. High necklines covered in wool fringe, and netted knit dresses with fringe hemlines in burgare seen on models. 

A warm bomber jacket in a shade of plum, mimicking the night. Scott’s presentation touches on the intimacy of the Black woman’s home, setting her bedroom as her “throne.” Soft butter yellows in knit pieces reflect her stripped down and safe default while structured suiting embodies her out in the world, head held high, strong, relentless. Oversized trousers that balloon at the hips and cinch at the ankles layered under a drop waist top featuring polka dotted crystals captivate onlookers. 

Underneath the spotlight, parallels of Danielle McKinney’s exhibition Quiet Storm and Carrie Mae Weems’ Kitchen Table Series. Intimate gathering at the table in black raffia and pearl-clad square-toed heels and simple knit cut out dresses call to MckKinney’s warm and nuanced painting of the Black woman while embodying the intimacy of Weem’s imagery. For instance, the models wearing rollers in their hair, bare faces with slight touches of blush parallel Weems’ imagery of the artist doing her own hair and makeup at the table.

 In a promise to uphold and honor the Black matriarch, Scott’s Fall/Winter collection embodies her in all that she is, in every form from youth to maturity, vulnerable to resilient. The private lives of the Black matriarch come alive in Diotima’s world.