A New York icon is making a comeback: the Proenza Schouler PS1 returned to the runway at the brand’s New York Fashion Week show on Thursday, with a fresh redesign by creative director Rachel Scott.
The new iteration of the bag, called the PS1 Walker, was first released in 2008 by Proenza founders Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez. This version borrows from the original’s practical, utilitarian design with some modern updates.
Scott has simplified the bag’s facade, reducing the layers of the front flaps and stitching while keeping the shape familiar. The classic silver latch, flanked by two buckle straps, remains intact, as well as its messenger design.
This time, the PS1 is made in a softer, slouchier leather and will come in three sizes: the mini (sold for $1,650), the medium ($2,090), and the large ($2,590).
Scott, who also designs her brand Diotima, says that plans to relaunch the PS1 were in motion almost as soon as she took on the job at Proenza last year, after it was announced that McCollough and Hernandez were departing their label, and New York, for co-creative director jobs at Loewe.
“With bags, it’s not something you introduce every season. You want to think about it for a longer period of time. There needed to be a level of practicality to it. I think that fashion really needs to serve the woman and her life,” says Scott. “An It-bag can be extremely luxurious, but very practical at the same time.”
Colors range from classic black, white and tan to a chrome yellow and mellow blue. The bag also comes in several shades of suede. As ever, it is made entirely in Italy, and was designed in collaboration with Reed Krakoff, the former creative director of Coach.
“I’ve always loved it, the original PS1,” says Krakoff. “It’s been something that has always been inspiring to so many people. So it was a great opportunity to rethink it for the next chapter. It’s a little less casual, a little more refined, but it still has that kind of cool downtown feel with an uptown polish.”
Since Scott soft-launched last September with a collection she consulted on with the design studio, she has released two full collections for Proenza. Her first hit stores in August.
In the leather goods category, the focus had been on footwear, while the bag strategy came into focus. CEO Shira Suveyke Snyder says that when she took the job in 2024, one of her first moves was to wind down wholesale buys for the brand’s handbags, while the original PS1 dwindled in stock both online and in Proenza stores.
Even on The RealReal, the PS1 is in short supply. In honor of the re-edition, the brand is releasing around five of the original bags to customers, which also appeared on the runway in New York.
Suveyke Snyder says it was important for the brand to “redefine our language in handbags”. But even without a big emphasis on bags, the leather goods category accounts for about a third of sales, something that the CEO thinks could be much more significant as the category develops under Scott.
Suveyke Snyder says she sees Proenza’s handbags — in addition to the PS1, the brand also showed an evening clutch as part of the new collection — filling a space left vacant when other luxury brands raised prices. The price point of the new bags, she says, is in line with what customers would have expected in years past (forget greedflation).
“This was really our first moment that we’ve taken a strong look at accessories and said, how do we want to evolve Proenza’s language and our narrative around accessories?” says Suveyke Snyder. “It was also about picking a time where we felt the market had been particularly quiet and there was space for us to have a new language and a new narrative for the bag.
So it really wasn’t coming off of existing PS1 performance.”
The PS1’s return is apt timing. Today’s customers are looking back on the 2000s era of fashion with rose-colored nostalgia glasses.
For Proenza, which launched in 2002, even the choice in show venue winked at New York fashion’s former era: the 7th Avenue space used to be home to the original downtown Barneys, which was the first store to stock Proenza. (More recently, it became the Rubin Museum, which is now permanently closed.) But can nostalgia in fashion be taken too far?
“I really don’t like this idea of either looking to the past or looking at someone else. I think I’m quite rebellious in that,” says Scott. “I don’t want to feel imprisoned by these ideas. Also, I just don’t think it’s responsible. The old [version] is available on The RealReal. You want to be introducing something new.”
Scott sees her role as still in development at Proenza, but the more she sees customers responding to her first full collection in-stores, the more confidence and clarity she gets around the customer. Proenza is a “by New York, for New York” brand, and Scott says she’s designing with a woman in mind who doesn’t pay attention to fashion rules. She’ll dress anything up or down, including her mini PS1.
The new handbag line comes as Scott settles into her own at the company. Her’s may have been one of the many new designer appointments that took place last year, yet she is tasked with the unique challenge of carrying on the legacy of a relatively young New York label whose founders were so recently embedded in it.
“It feels like everything is really gelling as an organization, as a creative language, as a color expression, as an attitude,” says Scott. “It takes a season or two, and we’re really only two seasons in.
You can already feel the difference between spring and fall, and we’re just getting started. We’ll keep getting more natural and more settled, and the team is just rallying around it and excited to be a part of it.”
While the bags will be available from January, Scott is already working on next year’s fall collection.
“I wanted to lay a foundation for a new interpretation of the brand, a new Proenza woman who is also the old Proenza woman,” says Scott. “I was intentionally quite restrained in February, because it was really about establishing a vernacular to find a new language of materiality, of color, of silhouette.
And I think there’s definitely, in terms of silhouette, even within the footwear and the bags, a suppleness of sensuality that I think wasn’t there before.”