While our collection of PS1s, PS11s, and PS13s has changed — and grown — over the years, Proenza Schouler's website has remained static. Well, until now — today, Proenza's designers, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, have relaunched www.proenzaschouler.com to keep up with their growing online customers and digital initiatives.
According to The Business of Fashion, which McCollough and Hernandez chatted with about brand-building, the site revamp is part of digital strategy that includes Harmony Korine's notorious YouTube films, GIF-based Twitter campaigns, and an expanding Twitter audience. And then there's Proenza's Tumblr-inspired spring '13 collection video (below), which perhaps best captures what McCollough calls the "Internet aesthetic" of the label: "There’s no nostalgia attached to it. It feels really new, and I think that scares people...A lot of luxury brands like to fall back on nostalgia, because nostalgia feels luxurious to them. We’re into luxury, but we’re also equally interested in contemporary culture.”
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It's a look that shines through the moment you click in — a mix of basic type, visually rich imagery, and easy navigability. Online shopping, for example, is simple — with quick zooms and accessible layouts, it makes the high-priced, exotic skins of your favorite carryalls somehow seem less daunting. "We grew up with the Internet,” Hernandez tells BoF. “It’s not something that we’re worried about; it’s not scary or some kind of magic box. It’s an amazing tool that helps us communicate with our friends and family and do research. It’s how we look at the world 90 percent of the time." That sounds about right.
Photo/Video: Courtesy of Proenza Schouler