Italy -- PROENZA SCHOULER will be the special guest at the fourth edition of the Pitti W_Woman Precollection event, taking place in Florence on 16-19 June 2009. The event is held concurrently with the Pitti Immagine Uomo 76 fair.

Launched in New York in 2002 by the designer duo Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, Proenza Schouler will take the stage in a special event in Florence, at a unique location, to celebrate the opening of the spring/summer 2010 season. This will also mark the very first time that Proenza Schouler will show their collection in Italy.

The designers are among the biggest names in the international fashion scene, and the Proenza Schouler brand, named after the designers’ mothers’ maiden names, has quickly become a key player in New York Fashion Week. Known for creating a style that explores contrasts in poetry and pragmatism, their collections blend a variety of disparate
influences from 1960’s American art to post-minimalism, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn to Dan Flavin and Donald Judd, always reinterpreted in their striking, contemporary vision.

The performance will exemplify the spirit of creative experimentation and understated luxury that has become the Proenza Schouler signature. An important event for the city of Florence, this also proves once again that the Pitti Immagine trade fairs are the platform of choice for the best fashion brands, with worldwide launches and other events by the
biggest names in fashion today.

‘Jack and Lazaro have established a signature...they have an incredible talent and a real sense of how their generation wants to dress, they have a great sense of proportion; they’re in tune with what’s happening in fashion globally.’(Sally Singer, Vogue USA, Summer 2008 issue of 10 Magazine).

‘Proenza Schouler has, from the start, represented sharp-edged contrasts: an uptown sensibility but with a raw energy and dense decoration contained in a taut silhouette’. (Suzy Menkes, International Herald Tribune, September 9, 2007)

“Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, of Proenza Schouler, represent the next generation of American talent.” (Cathy Horyn, New York Times, September 9, 2008)

Moreover Valentino Fashion Group S.p.A. owns 45% of US brand Proenza Schouler.
 
Valentino Fashion Group S.p.A