Is It a Good Time to Pull Out Your PS1 Again?

At its core, Proenza Schouler’s PS1 isn’t meant to be particularly glamorous.

It’s a riff on the classic messenger style – the cumbersome carryall “perpetually laden down with lead pencils, stacks of notebooks, and a big ole half-empty water bottle,” writes Liana Satenstein for Vogue.

Vogue’s Chioma Nnadi described the bag as “little bit schoolgirl but downtown.” And it didn’t quite help the bag’s scholastic associations that Serena Van Der Woodsen had it soldered to her wrists throughout Gossip Girl, or the fact that its naming paid tribute to the public schools of New York City.

Yet, there’s some kind of perverse pleasure to be derived in reappropriating this traditionally scholastic satchel to not-so-traditionally scholarly contexts. 

Like that inherent Miuccia naughtiness to the upturned collar on a Miu Miu polo, or flared Phoebe Philo trousers that zip right up to one’s nether regions, there’s something raunchy riche about schlepping a PS1 to grossdom.

Or at least, that’s how I wear my well-worn saddle darling: with band tees and skanky metallic tights like I’m about to start writhing on some grimy Brooklyn music club floor in the vein of Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O.

The truth is, dear reader, I never stopped wearing my precious PS1 long past its heyday. It was my first foray into designer-dom, and it remains a regular in my rotation even now, chapped straps and busted piping notwithstanding. 

So, imagine my delight when the Proenza boys were finally back in the fashion conversation thanks to their recent appointment at Loewe. And with that, the faintest flicker of hope – is this the year the PS1 finally returned too?

The Trappings of an It-Bag

An it-bag, like an it-girl in Matthew Schneier’s words, is one that “sums up everything new and chic in the way of fashion.”

But Proenza Schouler’s PS1 wasn’t an it-bag. 

Upon its launch in 2008, it was actually dubbed the anti-it-bag: “At the time it was all about It-bags and so we wanted to make the opposite,” says co-founder Lazaro Hernandez, adding “… And then ours became an It-bag.” And come to think of it, it met Schneier’s criterion of It quite iteratively: “‘It’ requires not only some degree of fame, but also the right leavening of obscurity.”

Because time and time again, we’ve seen that the it-bag disrupts – it is It because it is different. “I just thought it was so cool. I loved that it didn’t have a label,” says Sarah Spellings of the WSJ. “It felt like a cleanse after coveting Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Coach logo bags. Made me feel ‘in the know.’”

And indeed, like the similarly logo-less Balenciaga Motorcycle, the heavy-hefted Chloé Paddington, or Mulberry’s own take on the schoolgirl satchel, the Alexa, the PS1 encapsulated the tail-end of the excessive noughties, made to be beat up, thrown around, and withstand the wear and tear of life well-lived.

Yet, an it-bag is only It thanks to the it-girl that carries it.

This takes us to how the satchel was seeded selectively and sweetly among the hip, young (not to mention, It) friends of founders Hernandez and (Jack) McCollough. Foundational it-girl Chloë Sevigny was in the mix, and so were the Olsen twins, who owned versions in exotic python and supple suedes. 

Senior fashion writer and style editor Janelle Okwodu’s was in a “glorious” yellow, while former Vogue writer Florence Kane reportedly 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 Stuff of Fashion Fairy-Tales

However, the story of founders Jack and Lazaro goes way back to before the PS1. 

It was a sudden stroke of serendipity, for instance, that had Hernandez seated on a plane with Anna Wintour. The former braved the latter’s frosty demeanor to pass her a note on a napkin (!), which ultimately landed him an internship at Michael Kors. McCollough, meanwhile, was toiling away at Marc Jacobs. 

The two collaborated on their senior thesis at Parsons. This collection caught the eyes of (and subsequently bagged the contract under) then-Barneys’ fashion director and a stalwart fashion scout, Julie Gilhart.

Other quirky anecdotes abound: the duo–partners in both business and life reportedly interviewed (unsuccessfully) for a senior designer position at Narciso Rodriguez, stating, “We’re like one very expensive person.” 

By the turn of the year, Proenza Schouler –named after their mother’s maiden names – had been conceived. Alyssa Vingan of The New Garde remembers, “Proenza Schouler, as a brand, was the buzziest thing in town. Nobody was cooler than Jack and Lazaro… and all I ever wanted was to get a Proenza Schouler ticket. It felt that anyone cool was rallying around them.” 

And the hottest ticket to the brand you could possibly possess was the PS1.

“We had tremendous luck with the PS1 in a lot of ways, because a lot of things just fell into place, so a lot of these things we never had to think about before,” says McCollough. The PS1 has since been updated to the more pragmatic PS1+, bloated to a duffle-esque PS1 Keepall, shrunken to the PS1 Tiny, pared down to the PS1 Courier, and rendered in the rendition of a PS1 backpack.

However, it remains integral to the brand, some seventeen years after its original release. “The only true commercial success we had,” laments Hernandez, “was the PS1 bag. All of our eggs were in that basket.”

And that’s a dangerous place for a brand to be in. “Fashion can be a business of smoke and mirrors,” writes the Business of Fashion, “and Proenza Schouler never let the cracks show. Their story was too much of a fairy tale.”

Tumbling Down the Tumblr-Era

I was originally inspired to write this piece by Addison Rae’s latest MV for Headphones On, a video that, in the words of Lauren Garroni of the Every Outfit podcast, “perfectly captures what putting one’s headphones on feels like, which is, it feels like riding a horse on a black volcanic beach braless.”

In it, Rae is an ethereal presence, trodding down frothing green fields on a white Icelandic horse, her blazing pink hair blowing brazenly in the wind. Sure, what she really might be doing is merely clocking out of her shoddy shift at a dreary English supermarket, but that doesn’t stop her from transporting herself to a bolder, all-defying fantasy of herself.

The Proenza woman, in that regard, isn’t all that dissimilar from Rae’s girl-next-door grit. She tows the line between normalcy and stardom; it’s designer but doesn’t look designer. John Howard, an investor at the label, places “its locus is somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic” – not far from Iceland!

“For spring, (the Proenza boys) looked at a number of sources: the grainy paintings of Gerhard Richter, hippie crochet, patchwork denim,” writes Cathy Horyn. “But none would be recognizable once they were done; the Richter patterns became a jazzy tweed, for instance. The finished garments, in fact, were mesmerizing: couture as Tumblr.”

And the PS1 is really just that, a relic from the Tumblr times that remains a faithful canvas to all their whims and whimsies, even if it doesn’t quite command the it-status it once did. Similar to how we’ll still be listening to Rae’s song long after she’s descended from her internet-fame high-horse.

Because putting your headphones on – or alternately, carrying the it-bag of your dreams – is truly how it feels to live in your own fashion fantasy.

Even if it’s one from yesteryears. Even if it’s not-so-it anymore. 

Especially if it’s not-so-it anymore.