The Glory of the Proenza Schouler PS1 Bag
The Rando Report this week is an ode to a bag featured in my huge, massive, hulking Sunday Sale!
The Rando Report is a weekly roundup of observations…some longer than others. This one is long.
One of the hot items to be added to the Neverworns Live! Shopping auction this Sunday 1/19 at 7pm EST will include a pristine powder pink Proenza Schouler PS1 bag. This feels…very right now: Proenza Schouler designers Jack McCollough and Lazarao Hernandez are heading to Loewe. The PS1 is ripe for nostalgia-drenched revival.
I’ve always loved their hit bag the PS1 and my love only grew after I interviewed the handsome McCollough and Hernandez backstage a few seasons ago. At the time, the duo was introducing their new sleek Flip Shoulder bag, which had hardware reminiscent of their big kahuna hit, the PS1. After the show, McCollough told me that they never showed a PS1 on the runway, which felt like a sin as the bag is synonymous with the label. Plus, there is great lore surrounding it. I wrote about the chic girl satchel for Vogue years ago. Former Vogue writer Florence Kane, who wrote the initial article introducing the bag to the world in 2008, told me she had to beg to get that rich school girl sac in those glossy pages. Kane succeeded, and voila, with the Vogue stamp, the bag was even more everywhere than before.
The bag was ripe for a New York takeover in the late 2000s.
of The New Garde tells me about the energy surrounding the bag and Proenza Schouler in the early days. “I started working in fashion at my first internship at Fashionista in 2009, a year after the PS1 was introduced. Proenza Schouler, as a brand, was the buzziest thing in town. Nobody was cooler than Jack and Lazaro,” says Vingan. “There was an energy in New York at the time surrounding talent in the downtown area, which was intoxicating and exciting, and all I ever wanted was to get a Proenza Schouler ticket. It felt that anyone cool was rallying around them.” Vingan tells me she still has her first PS1, which she bought a few years later when she had some cash to burn. Years later, it looks better with wear than when she first unboxed it.The piece is a historical It bag. It’s one of those brandless, sturdy leather pieces like the Chloé Paddington or the Balenciaga City, a tabula rasa departure from the monogrammed era of bags. Looks aside, the PS1 was also an It bag because of how it was seeded. Hernandez and McCollough sent it out to their hot friends like Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, and Chloë Sevigny, along to the about-town editors. What a delightful form of gifting! Designer to friend! This is a far cry from the gifting of today. Speaking of Vingan, she recently wrote about the oversaturation of gifting we see on social media, which may lessen want. “However, the same, extremely online generation is embroiled in an ongoing personal style discourse which argues that shoppers need to stop being spoon-fed trends and what items to buy, making the mass seeding an interesting choice,” she writes. Ouch.
Perhaps this extremely online generation is lusting for the pre-social media era of brand gifting when gifts were, well, more tender. This designer-to-friend gifting act is sweet, as the gesture comes straight from the heart! From the loom! From the damn tannery! From the sweating, toiling hands of the creator onto the arm of a gorgeous recipient with an actual relationship with the brand. Think of it as the inner sanctum gifting. You won’t find a designer-to-friend gift bopping around The RealReal as much as you would when it’s from a faceless PR! Why? Well, there’s a connection and it’s harder to sever a tie when there is an emotional relationship with the object. Note: I cleanse closets for people constantly, and I will say that people have the most trouble parting with pieces given to them by friends, even if they aren’t fans of the piece to begin with!
We’ve seen this designer-to-friend gifting scenario with other hit bags like Nicolas Ghesquière Balenciaga City bag and the Tom Ford-era YSL Mombasa bag. Both designers sent their bags out to friends. Yes, it helped that the friends were hot and famous or were high up on the masthead, but that doesn’t negate the thoughtful sentiment. You can’t bottle that sentiment in an Instagram post. Nor can you bottle want or yearning. Ultimately, you can’t bottle a great story—and the PS1 is indeed a great story.
Note: I wrote about something similar about the Chloé front-row wedges a few months ago!
PSA: I am having my sale this Sunday, 1/19, at 7pm in an undisclosed location with limited space. More items will be added. It’s a twisted event…a delectable dive into all of my eras of womanhood and what I wore for each stage of my life. It’s like a museum on hangers. If you’re not there, that’s fine: You’ll see the sale in this unhinged context as if you’re actually there in the flesh because I’ll be streaming this weird happening. To bid, you’ll have to use the auction platform Whatnot to bid on all of the pieces. (I’ll stream on Substack, regardless) But to bid, sign up here. And don’t forget about that delicious $15 discount with the signup.
love this!