Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the handsome designers behind Proenza Schouler, seem to have an enviable professional relationship, but do they ever spat? “Yes, of course,” McCollough said at last night’s screening of The Day Before, a Sundance documentary series about the anxious 24 hours before the fall 2009 Proenza show (other episodes follow Jean Paul Gaultier, Sonia Rykiel, and Karl Lagerfeld). “It’s part of the creative process — the dialogue,” Hernandez said. So what did they disagree over while designing the spring collection they’re showing next week at Milk? “There was a lot; it’s been a tricky collection,” McCollough said. “We’re doing new things,” Lazaro explained. “Like color,” Hernandez finished. “But color’s really subjective.” They explained how their design process works:
McCollough: A color you like I might despise.
Hernandez: Everyone sees color differently.
McCollough: If he likes red and I like blue, we wind up doing purple.
Hernandez: We do a lot of gray, because he likes black and I like white.
McCollough: I don’t really like white, actually.
Hernandez: I don’t really like black, either.
Anyway, the boys added, business is improving: “Things are definitely picking up from the low of last year,” Hernandez said. “But stores still aren’t buying as much.” Leighton Meester, seated nearby at the piano, told us she’s excited for the Proenza show — probably the only show the Gossip Girl star will get see this Fashion Week, she said.
Naturally, when we bumped into Marc Jacobs’s fiancé, Lorenzo Martone, we asked him who’s cuter: Lazaro or Jack? He couldn’t make up his mind, but acknowledged, “Jack has the nice tattoos — sexy tattoos, and I love tattoos.” He pointed out Jacobs has 33 tattoos. But when is their oft-speculated-upon wedding? “We’re actually not talking about that anymore, because it seems to be very explored in the wrong way, so we’re trying to keep it very quiet and private,” Lorenzo explained. “We want to make it special for us. Marc never had a problem talking about our personal life to the press, but I think now he realizes that the relationship was overexposed a little bit. I think it’s healthy to actually preserve our intimacy. What I can tell you is that we’re very, very happy together!” Aw.
