Moschino (Q1783)
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Italian luxury fashion house
- Moschino, Italian
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Moschino |
Italian luxury fashion house |
|
Statements
2013
Designer
designer for
Adrian Appiolaza is settling in at Moschino. His latest rite of passage is this pre-collection lookbook, a project for which he enlisted photographer Chris Rhodes and a villa on the outskirts of Milan. As for muses, Appiolaza looked to British aristocrats, chalking up his interest to his split English and Argentinian background, as well as a recent watching of The Crown.In the spirit of Franco Moschino, Appiolaza approached the subject with a welcome bit of irreverence. His aristos ride bicycles in the foyer, play dress-up with antique carpets, and wear the family china as jewelry. Rounding the corner on a year at the Italian brand, his point of view is sharpening into focus. His Moschino is less campy and more rooted in the everyday than it was in its former iterations, but not without elements of whimsy. “Franco had that sense of irony and humor, so it’s important that I keep that vein through the collection,” he said.He did so with a number of techniques: stamping an English hunting jacket trompe l’oeil-style onto a t-shirt, collaging other jackets into a sleeveless dress, cutting lingerie slips and camp shirts in a tea-and-crumpets print, and tweaking the classic Argyle sweater motif with Moschino smiley faces and hearts. Hailing from Loewe, Appiolaza has a good handle on brand building. The heart, which he’s turned into a sort of de facto symbol, appears as knee patches on terrific-looking denim jeans.He collaborated with Sanderson—holders of the Royal Warrant, in case you didn’t know—for the floral prints that turned up on dresses and tailoring. Other motifs, like a cloud print and a naive landscape print, were pulled from Franco’s archive and have been seen in different guises on his Moschino runways. Appiolaza’s own playful personality comes across clear as day on a cloud print bag upon which the words “help me” are scrawled. What’s that all about? “It was an ironic way to say ‘help me’ become the next It bag,” he laughed.
3 December 2024
Adrian Appiolaza is settling in at Moschino. His latest rite of passage is this pre-collection lookbook, a project for which he enlisted photographer Chris Rhodes and a villa on the outskirts of Milan. As for muses, Appiolaza looked to British aristocrats, chalking up his interest to his split English and Argentinian background, as well as a recent watching of The Crown.In the spirit of Franco Moschino, Appiolaza approached the subject with a welcome bit of irreverence. His aristos ride bicycles in the foyer, play dress-up with antique carpets, and wear the family china as jewelry. Rounding the corner on a year at the Italian brand, his point of view is sharpening into focus. His Moschino is less campy and more rooted in the everyday than it was in its former iterations, but not without elements of whimsy. “Franco had that sense of irony and humor, so it’s important that I keep that vein through the collection,” he said.He did so with a number of techniques: stamping an English hunting jacket trompe l’oeil-style onto a t-shirt, collaging other jackets into a sleeveless dress, cutting lingerie slips and camp shirts in a tea-and-crumpets print, and tweaking the classic Argyle sweater motif with Moschino smiley faces and hearts. Hailing from Loewe, Appiolaza has a good handle on brand building. The heart, which he’s turned into a sort of de facto symbol, appears as knee patches on terrific-looking denim jeans.He collaborated with Sanderson—holders of the Royal Warrant, in case you didn’t know—for the floral prints that turned up on dresses and tailoring. Other motifs, like a cloud print and a naive landscape print, were pulled from Franco’s archive and have been seen in different guises on his Moschino runways. Appiolaza’s own playful personality comes across clear as day on a cloud print bag upon which the words “help me” are scrawled. What’s that all about? “It was an ironic way to say ‘help me’ become the next It bag,” he laughed.
3 December 2024
Adrian Appiolaza, the new designer now in his third season at Moschino, is a fashion completist, intent on not just recasting the house founder Franco Moschino’s legacy for a 21st-century audience but also imparting all he knows about the tastemakers and the styles of decades past for anyone who’s watching. His show today was the runway equivalent of a subcultural grand tour, a study of fashion cliques from a guy with an obsessive eye for detail.It started with a group of all-white looks: They were the connective tissue between this collection and his debut in February, and their draped silhouettes were inspired by a photo of Moschino twisting fabric around a mannequin that Appiolaza dug up. From there he made nods at other icons of his, inviting Terry Jones, the cofounder ofi-Dmagazine, to produce graphic slogans in his trademark style for T-shirts and leggings and collaborating with the Judy Blame Trust to borrow some of the assemblage necklaces the iconic late designer was known to use as accessories.Blame’s edgy stylings seemed to have influenced the cocktail dress and Le Smoking embellished with punkish pearls, while the fedora-hat-wearing duo conjured his Buffalo era. The chalk drawings that decorated those hats, as well as the backs of the models’ coats (a shame you can’t see them in the runway images), reproduced one of Moschino’s childhood drawings. The stripey knits and lacy slip dresses evoked the famous grunge collection of Marc Jacobs—at least that’s what I saw—but the black-and-white polka dots, including some hand-painted directly onto models’ skin, were Franco Moschino through and through. Most ambitious and interesting were the deconstructed LBDs, little T-shirt tube dresses (tubinosin Italian, Appiolaza said) that from the back were cut in the more expressive shapes of the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s.Will Appiolaza’s expansive vision conjure a Moschino clique? That’s the mission. “Fun and optimism are important for me,” he said. “I think that’s what people are going to find.” For the moment, at least, all those Easter eggs have aroused the attention of fashion obsessives like him.
19 September 2024
Before he left Argentina for London (then Paris, and now Milan), Adrian Appiolaza once held down a job selling insurance. To present a respectable façade to potential clients, his employer obliged him to wear a company-provided suit. Speaking before his first menswear show for Moschino—and, in fact, his first menswear show ever—Appiolaza shuddered as he recalled: “I felt like a prisoner of that suit.”This afternoon, that formative trauma collided with something once said by Franco Moschino himself: “It’s better to dress as you wish than as you should.” This line was inscribed upon the bowling bag accompanying Look 37 (part of this show’s simultaneously presented resort collection) as well as on the T-shirt in Look 22 (a cipher for Appiolaza himself). It was also the starting point for the designer to intertwine three loose narratives: a shift from formality to freedom, the archival landscape of Moschino himself, and Appiolaza’s own journey.We started in the office. The egg and banana jewelry represented breakfast: Appiolaza began his commute with some heartily ironic takes on corporate attire. A shirt skirt worn with a real shirt but unreal suspenders and a four-button suit teamed with three hats were amongst the first of many, many archival references. The shredded Moschino fax housecoat and overcoat, the Moschino Air hat, and the goodbye Post-it suit seemed to semaphore our runway takeoff to a happier place.That Appiolaza cipher in very Franco pastiche Chanel was the turning point towards a series of wearable wish fulfillments; archetypes whose identities spoke to the various stories he was combining. The soccer-ball sweater teamed with a tri-starred baseball cap was a salute back to Argentina, while the Italian flag soccer couple—one with an authentic red sauce splattering—was a gesture to Appiolaza’s new creative home. A Latin lover in carpenter jeans and a southern siren in an embroidered postcard-from-Naples skirt preceded a slipper-pocket bathrobe-wearing luxury guest toting a fearsome tool bag: Her look seemed to echoVogueItalia’s 2010 Makeover Madness editorial by Steven Meisel. Canonical Moschino heart bags were toted against paneled raffia basket bags. The founder’s recurring goose motif returned in prints on skirts and shirting in a hokey, bucolic countrywear duet. There were in-jokes, out-jokes, literal Moschino easter eggs, and purposefully ambiguous references left to be taken according to your direction of travel.
A lilac-and-pale-turquoise menswear sarong printed with office supplies worn below an untied-tie shirt (that was mostly unbuttoned) implied that our salaryman had found his summer paradise. The closing all-white heavy linen suit with a sleeve skirt was both an inversion of and return to the start. Appiolaza’s cast walked their finale around piles of lost luggage that symbolized the tangle of transformational journey narratives he was playing with: This was a show both scholarly and personal that took you places.
14 June 2024
Before he left Argentina for London (then Paris, and now Milan), Adrian Appiolaza once held down a job selling insurance. To present a respectable façade to potential clients, his employer obliged him to wear a company-provided suit. Speaking before his first menswear show for Moschino—and, in fact, his first menswear show ever—Appiolaza shuddered as he recalled: “I felt like a prisoner of that suit.”This afternoon, that formative trauma collided with something once said by Franco Moschino himself: “It’s better to dress as you wish than as you should.” This line was inscribed upon the bowling bag accompanying Look 37 (part of this show’s simultaneously presented resort collection) as well as on the T-shirt in Look 22 (a cipher for Appiolaza himself). It was also the starting point for the designer to intertwine three loose narratives: a shift from formality to freedom, the archival landscape of Moschino himself, and Appiolaza’s own journey.We started in the office. The egg and banana jewelry represented breakfast: Appiolaza began his commute with some heartily ironic takes on corporate attire. A shirt skirt worn with a real shirt but unreal suspenders and a four-button suit teamed with three hats were amongst the first of many, many archival references. The shredded Moschino fax housecoat and overcoat, the Moschino Air hat, and the goodbye Post-it suit seemed to semaphore our runway take off to a happier place.That Appiolaza cipher in very Franco pastiche Chanel was the turning point towards a series of wearable wish fulfillments; archetypes whose identities spoke to the various stories he was combining. The soccer-ball sweater teamed with a tri-starred baseball cap was a salute back to Argentina, while the Italian flag soccer couple—one with an authentic red sauce splattering—was a gesture to Appiolaza’s new creative home. A Latin lover in carpenter jeans and a southern siren in an embroidered postcard-from-Naples skirt preceded a slipper-pocket bathrobe-wearing luxury guest toting a fearsome tool bag: Her look seemed to echoVogueItalia’s 2010 Makeover Madness editorial by Steven Meisel. Canonical Moschino heart bags were toted against paneled raffia basket bags. The founder’s recurring goose motif returned in prints on skirts and shirting in a hokey, bucolic countrywear duet. There were in-jokes, out-jokes, literal Moschino easter eggs, and purposefully ambiguous references left to be taken according to your direction of travel.
A lilac-and-pale-turquoise menswear sarong printed with office supplies worn below an untied-tie shirt (that was mostly unbuttoned) implied that our salaryman had found his summer paradise. The closing all-white heavy linen suit with a sleeve skirt was both an inversion of and return to the start. Appiolaza’s cast walked their finale around piles of lost luggage that symbolized the tangle of transformational journey narratives he was playing with: This was a show both scholarly and personal that took you places.
14 June 2024
Adrian Appiolaza was named creative director of Moschino three weeks and two days ago. His arrival is tinged with sadness. Davide Renne, his predecessor in the role, died suddenly not long after beginning the job. It’s delicate, taking over in a situation like this; Appiolaza did so by committing himself to Franco Moschino’s legacy.“It’s been a very intense journey,” he said backstage. “My first input when I decided to take this opportunity was to go to Franco’s universe and bring it to today. I went to the archive and picked iconic points of Franco.”This Moschino is a big departure from that of Jeremy Scott, who headed up the label for nearly 10 years before exiting last March. Dubbed “the king of camp,” the American designer grabbed onto a theme and didn’t let go, making indelible collections, if fewer everyday clothes. Appiolaza, who is Argentinian, took a much broader approach with this first outing, reviving many of Moschino’s signatures—the cloud print first shown in 1985, a smiley face lifted from a yellow blazer in the Costume Institute’s permanent collection, a white and black tweed skirt suit that nodded in Coco’s direction, and slogan pieces promoting love and peace, among other things. The peace sweater dress in particular was interesting for the way the model’s head emerged from the P.Mixed in among all those house memories were other “characters,” as Appiolaza called them, dressed “eccentric, but real.” Franco, he said, “had this saying: ‘wear what you want, not what you should.’ I want to keep the theatricality that he was known for but bring it in a more balanced offer.” Hailing most recently from Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe, and with a long résumé that includes stints at Chloé, Miu Miu, and Louis Vuitton, Appiolaza has a handle on eccentric realness; here it mostly revolved around deconstructed tailoring, stonewashed denim, and knits either 100% shrunken or 100% enlarged, and embroidered as such on the back.He sent the clothes out on one of Milan’s rare gender-diverse runways. There’s promise and intrigue here. We’ll be curious to see where Appiolaza takes Moschino with a full season to develop his next collection.
22 February 2024
“Same Old Chic” is the slogan that runs throughout Moschino’s pre-fall collections for women and men, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the brand’s penchant to, well, reference its past iconic moments. A coat with a collar trimmed in teddy bears is worn with a matching Ushanka-style hat made up of more teddy bears, lined in a row; a barcode was blown up and used as the basis for a black and white striped pattern on a button-down cotton shirt, a trench coat, and a skirt.Ironically, the bulk of the collections are made up of wearable wardrobe building blocks—pieces like a handsome burgundy leather blouson-style jacket, a pair of terrific tan overcoats (single and double breasted), modern tailored suits with a slouchy fit, and herringbone tweeds like a slip dress worn with a long jacket that had a dose of youthful cool. In the classics with a twist category are a khaki trench coat with fringed sleeves and a little black jacket trimmed in pearls—with an added peace sign insignia in the back. Elsewhere, a series of sweatshirts and sweatpants read “You Can’t Be Serious.”
4 December 2023
“Same Old Chic” is the slogan that runs throughout Moschino’s pre-fall collections for women and men, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the brand’s penchant to, well, reference its past iconic moments. A coat with a collar trimmed in teddy bears is worn with a matching Ushanka-style hat made up of more teddy bears, lined in a row; a barcode was blown up and used as the basis for a black and white striped pattern on a button-down cotton shirt, a trench coat, and a skirt.Ironically, the bulk of the collections are made up of wearable wardrobe building blocks—pieces like a handsome burgundy leather blouson-style jacket, a pair of terrific tan overcoats (single and double breasted), modern tailored suits with a slouchy fit, and herringbone tweeds like a slip dress worn with a long jacket that had a dose of youthful cool. In the classics with a twist category are a khaki trench coat with fringed sleeves and a little black jacket trimmed in pearls—with an added peace sign insignia in the back. Elsewhere, a series of sweatshirts and sweatpants read “You Can’t Be Serious.”
4 December 2023
Moschino’s pre-fall collection is full of heart. The Italian label has never shied away from iconography, but given that Davide Renne, the house’s newly-minted creative director, passed away less than a month after being named to the post, the symbol took on new meaning here. The first look, a tuxedo shirt with frills down the front, is decorated with a large red heart inset at the chest, while the last two looks feature fleeced insets that cut across the leg of trousers, and the arms of crewneck sweaters and handsome car coats. This same color-blocking effect is used with other geometric shapes like triangles and circles, which toyed playfully with perception.The brand’s tongue-in-cheek aesthetic is present in the security tags that are an essential part of the in-person retail experience, done up in bright red (what else?) and conspicuously placed on the front of jackets and trousers. It’s also reflected in comically proportioned ties (extra-wide, cut-short with a blunt hem, and done in brightly colored stripes); trompe l’oeil details like trousers with built-in exposed baggy boxer waistbands, or shrunken sweatshirts “collaged” with button-downs; and unexpected knitted touches like a cummerbund the house is calling a “belly warmer.”A sky blue suit was one of the standouts of the collection. The jacket, a slightly retro silhouette with three buttons and flap pockets, is cut in leather, while the flared trousers and button-down shirt are a woven fabric. Accessorized with a black tie with neon salmon polka dots, it’s unmistakably Moschino, no visual gags necessary.
21 November 2023
How do you celebrate a 40th anniversary when your creative director seat is empty? If you’re Moschino, you enlist four boldface stylists and invite them to pull ideas from Franco Moschino’s archive and reinterpret them for today.Moschino died of AIDS-related causes in 1994, not much more than 10 years after founding his label, and yet his legacy still looms large. He did nothing by half measures, making camp fun of fashion-world proprieties, in particular the Chanel tweed suit, and printing words across his clothes to get a rise out of his contemporaries or just to get a laugh. Years before the dawn of the internet, he was a social media designer, aware of the power of fashion to send messages.The stylists’ parameters tonight were to focus on that first decade of Moschino. Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, who worked alongside Jeremy Scott for the 10 years he was at the label, was first up with a series of looks that appeared to play against type, emphasizing elegance where Moschino was better known for extravagance. Au contraire, she said backstage. “Mr. Moschino loved all the classics, so I decided to do this. No extravaganza, just clean, sublime, and chic.” Think khakis, jeans, a white suit, a Perfecto jacket, a chunky turtleneck sweater, a heather gray hoodie, and a white T-shirt, plus a K-Way-style jacket of the kind she likes to wear, only in taffeta. She pointed out that it was all mix-and-matchable.Next up was Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, aVoguecontributor and stylist whose clients include Altuzarra and Etro, with something completely different. “The vibe is cunty cowboy,” she said. “Moschino was known for subversion. There was always a ‘flipping it’ involved. So I thought, What’s something in his language that I could flip as a Black woman? I decided it was the cowboy hat. It’s the most white, masculine symbol on planet Earth.” Tapping into Moschino’s maximalist tendencies, she aimed for “visual dissonance,” resurrecting a granny-square skirt from the archive, patchworking denim and lace, adding beaded fringe to a tie-dye cocktail suit, and, yes, tossing in a couple of cowboy hats.Lucia Liu, a stylist based in Beijing, went looking for a link between her own aesthetic and Moschino’s and found it in his florals and knitwear. “Those elements were separated in his original designs. I put them together to make something that feels very new.” Also in the mix in Liu’s romantic designs: ruffles, bows, and cutout hearts.
Wary of anything that felt too historical or reverential, the stylist and founder ofPerfectmagazine Katie Grand found herself drawn to Moschino’s slogans. “It was the idea of what he would do if it were a slogan for now,” she said. “Loud luxury is what came to me. It felt current.” We’ve definitely heard enough about quiet luxury. With a troupe of energetic dancers, choreographed by Wayne McGregor, wearing her black-and-white looks, there was nothing quiet about this portion of the show.Moschino himself railed against the way fashion clung to the past. Though he may not have approved of the idea of a 40th-anniversary celebration, it’s a good bet he would’ve been tickled by the variety and vitality that the stylists saw in his work.
21 September 2023
Ahead of the Moschino show in Milan this September, which will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the brand and feature the talents of the four stylists Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, Katie Grand, and Lucia Liu comes a dual-season offering that brings together the women’s resort and the men’s spring collections. (Jeremy Scott left the company earlier this year and the executives are currently searching for a new creative director.)The first look, a white button-down shirt emblazoned with “100% PURE MOSCHINO,” sets the tone: these clothes are like candy, providing a quick fix of fun. There are gold logo embellishments on fisherman vests and bomber jackets, gold heart charms decorating skirts and hanging from the back of halter tops, and gold heart lockets strategically placed as pierced nipples on tank tops. The tight palette of white, black, red, yellow, and khaki is contrasted by tailored separates appliquéd with colorful silk scarves.This interim collection features something for everyone, from beach-ready printed sets and casual full-on denim looks to logo t-shirts worn underneath bolero and flared pant suits. Dressier options include a black and white striped column dress with a hint of ’90s minimalism and sequin gowns including one with a big red heart and letters reading IN <3 WE TRUST.
15 June 2023
Ahead of the Moschino show in Milan this September, which will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the brand and feature the talents of the four stylists Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, Katie Grand, and Lucia Liu comes a dual-season offering that brings together the women’s resort and the men’s spring collections. (Jeremy Scott left the company earlier this year and the executives are currently searching for a new creative director.)The first look, a white button-down shirt emblazoned with “100% PURE MOSCHINO,” sets the tone: these clothes are like candy, providing a quick fix of fun. There are gold logo embellishments on fisherman vests and bomber jackets, gold heart charms decorating skirts and hanging from the back of halter tops, and gold heart lockets strategically placed as pierced nipples on tank tops. The tight palette of white, black, red, yellow, and khaki is contrasted by tailored separates appliquéd with colorful silk scarves.This interim collection features something for everyone, from beach-ready printed sets and casual full-on denim looks to logo t-shirts worn underneath bolero and flared pant suits. Dressier options include a black and white striped column dress with a hint of ’90s minimalism and sequin gowns including one with a big red heart and letters reading IN <3 WE TRUST.
15 June 2023
The moment when a prominent house is in between one generally successful creative director—as Jeremy Scott most certainly was at Moschino— whatever comes next is often seized as an opportunity to criticize for the sake of it by those who would otherwise never dare to. And yet it is not always the case that a rudderless house will drift in the wrong direction.This Moschino menswear collection floated along just fine. It was an exercise in opposition and signature irony that perhaps lacked an articulated raison d’etre—besides being bought—but which was nonetheless infused with enough quirk to work. An archive house floral played foil on corsetry and tight tops against messed up tailoring, complete with side-wrenched multi-collared shirts and schoolboy rebel back-to-front ties. Safari-camp (and simultaneously camp-camp) beige explorer separates and knits came stained with splattered paint embroideries. The florals bloomed beyond the print into charm strewn chains at the neckline and waist. Soberly anachronistic Prince of Wales tailoring, Brideshead-silhouette oversized, was clashed against wrapped sash silk shirting and corduroy Bermudas in violent aquamarine.Neither a travesty nor a triumph, this was a Moschino collection that contained certain pieces, chiefly a gorgeous oversized biker, that you’d relish wearing way beyond one fleeting interregnum.
16 May 2023
Salvador Dali’sMelting Clocks—official nameThe Persistence of Memory—was Jeremy Scott’s starting point at Moschino this season. The painting’s drippy timepieces inspired an opening group of skirt suits and knit dresses whose once rigorous lines were rendered drippy; hems dipped and curled like waves, and houndstooth, a pattern that typically has a lot of bite, was distorted and softened so that it looked almost poured on, rather than uniform. There were also flower prints that oozed down the canvas that was their fitted button-front dress. Even said buttons appeared to have spent too long too close to a heat source. All this was magnified by Michel Gaubert’s slo-mo soundtrack, 45 rpm versions of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” and Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night” played at 33 rpm speed.“We’re living in distorted times,” Scott said backstage, delivering the soundbite. “Things that seem familiar aren’t familiar. I mean, isn’t it hard to figure things out?” The first half of the show, then, looked like a witty rejoinder to last season’s pool floaties, which were a commentary on an out of control economy: inflation replaced by deflation. Dali’s 1931 masterpiece, after all, was a Surrealist response of sorts to the disintegration of society’s belief in upward progress.But Scott’s usual gung-ho commitment to a theme didn’t sustain itself. Midway through, the collection switched gears, and the drips were replaced by an aristo-punk vibe featuring large crystal embellishments and even larger metal spikes as motifs. Considering the monster mohawk hairpieces the models wore, it might’ve been a nod in Vivienne Westwood’s direction—we’ve seen other tributes to the late Dame Viv lately—but then again, maybe not. It’s a testament to the meaningful fun that’s usually had at Scott’s Moschino shows that this one didn’t entirely meet the moment.
23 February 2023
Last month,Vogueposted a video from inside Jeremy Scott fan Joey Arias’s filled-to-bursting closet. Over 10 years he’s bought 700 pieces, sometimes trading longed-for items with fellow fans on Instagram. What makes a collector so devoted? Arias, who is a Dallas-based clinical operations manager for a mobile dental company, responds to the exuberance of Scott’s work. “I know people who use fashion as kind of an armor or a shield,” he says, “but wearing Jeremy’s clothes, not only am I being truly myself, they also act like a welcome mat. People are just drawn to it, and they want to ask about it.”That’s one of Scott’s talents as a designer: His fashion shows are an enthusiastic embrace, where others metaphorically cross their arms and say ‘you’re not invited.’ His other talents are many, but the ones on display in this collection are his commitment to a theme and his ingenuity. The theme in question this season is tailoring; the lookbook opens with a group of suits for men and women in haberdasher’s scraps collaged together into single- and double-breasted suits, and silk jacquard neckties sewn into natty vests and knee-length skirts, as well as short and long party dresses.The worsted wools, gabardines, and houndstooths give the outing a more serious demeanor than the inflation-themed pool floaty collection he sent down Moschino’s Milan runway for spring, but there’s plenty of humor in these pieces too, whether it’s the lapels of top coats that curve up around the head to form dramatic hoods, or the le smoking elements—cummerbunds, bow ties, satin revers—that he supersized on his evening wear.With awards season heating up, it seems likely that some of these numbers will be making the red carpet rounds. The two likeliest: a strapless black gown whose heart-shaped bodice is embroidered with gold hearts of all shapes and sizes topped by a cropped bolero, and, for a more extroverted nominee, the le smoking Scott transformed into a curvaceous skirt, its lapels curving upward to frame the torso, with two red corsages forming the bra top. A conversation piece, for sure.
5 December 2022
Last month,Vogueposted a video from inside Jeremy Scott fan Joey Arias’s filled-to-bursting closet. Over 10 years he’s bought 700 pieces, sometimes trading longed-for items with fellow fans on Instagram. What makes a collector so devoted? Arias, who is a Dallas-based clinical operations manager for a mobile dental company, responds to the exuberance of Scott’s work. “I know people who use fashion as kind of an armor or a shield,” he says, “but wearing Jeremy’s clothes, not only am I being truly myself, they also act like a welcome mat. People are just drawn to it, and they want to ask about it.”That’s one of Scott’s talents as a designer: His fashion shows are an enthusiastic embrace, where others metaphorically cross their arms and say ‘you’re not invited.’ His other talents are many, but the ones on display in this collection are his commitment to a theme and his ingenuity. The theme in question this season is tailoring; the lookbook opens with a group of suits for men and women in haberdasher’s scraps collaged together into single- and double-breasted suits, and silk jacquard neckties sewn into natty vests and knee-length skirts, as well as short and long party dresses.The worsted wools, gabardines, and houndstooths give the outing a more serious demeanor than the inflation-themed pool floaty collection he sent down Moschino’s Milan runway for spring, but there’s plenty of humor in these pieces too, whether it’s the lapels of top coats that curve up around the head to form dramatic hoods, or the le smoking elements—cummerbunds, bow ties, satin revers—that he supersized on his evening wear.With awards season heating up, it seems likely that some of these numbers will be making the red carpet rounds. The two likeliest: a strapless black gown whose heart-shaped bodice is embroidered with gold hearts of all shapes and sizes topped by a cropped bolero, and, for a more extroverted nominee, the le smoking Scott transformed into a curvaceous skirt, its lapels curving upward to frame the torso, with two red corsages forming the bra top. A conversation piece, for sure.
5 December 2022
You could see this Moschino collection as a historical counterpart to the inflation-themed women’s proposal Jeremy Scott staged in Milan two months ago: punk, the subculture that externalized youth-centric feelings of hopelessness and anti-establishment rebellion while the economy was going down the drain in the 1970s. But here, unlike his women’s show, Scott had swapped his tragicomedy for a more profound approach to his subject matter. Rather than turning punk on its head, he recreated its original sentiments for a new era.“Destroy to rebuild. We have to fight for everything we believe in,” read a graffiti motif on the back of a rusty brown herringbone coat. “Those sentiments still have validity because we’re fighting about things globally, from our elections here to the strife in Ukraine to the atrocities happening in Iran,” Scott said on a video call from Los Angeles. “There are so many different things that require attention and energy and, sometimes, for you to fight for what’s right.”The punk movement was so figurative in its own expression that its trademarks often didn’t require Moschino’s irony treatment. When it came to pieces rebelliously collaged from elements of establishment wardrobes—traditional men’s tailoring, military uniforms, kilts—Scott simply amplified the attitude (and the studs). Similarly, he left deconstructed formal suits held together with safety pins intact, at least from a punk perspective.Instead, he instilled the Moschino factor in magnified safety pins on coats and jackets, lots of leopard print, all-over dollar-bill motifs, and trompe l’oeil elements that would have delighted an original member of the anti-establishment. Speaking of, at a dinner Scott did once try to make Dame Vivienne Westwood reflect on her movement’s transition into the mainstream, but like a true punk, all she wanted to talk about was activism. “She’s a legend and an English treasure,” he said.Born in Kansas City in 1975, Scott was justifiably never a punk. But sitting there on our video call dressed in his Mighty Mouse T-shirt and talking about the riot of color that has defined his own life, it was easy to see the links between his own aesthetic and the rebels who paved the way.These days, Miley Cyrus takes him to see contemporary punk bands in Los Angeles. “I don’t think they’re so much caught up in anti-establishment, to be honest with you. I remember one song was about a gold-digger….
It could almost have been a rap song but performed in a guitar, screaming format,” he laughed. But, in life as in fashion, “I think a punk spirit is always good.”
15 November 2022
Talk about diving in headfirst! Nobody embraces a theme like Jeremy Scott, a fact he’s reinforced throughout his eight-year run at Moschino, but this season he really went for it. “Everybody’s talking about inflation,” he said backstage. “The cost of everything’s going up: housing, food, life. So I took inflation into the collection.” He wasn’t talking about rising hemlines or oversized volumes either. He meant it literally, as we learned from look 1, a little black dress with Franco Moschino’s iconic heart done up as a mini inflatable “with a nozzle and everything.”By this observer’s count, every look save for a small handful had some sort of inflatable detail, be it a heart-shaped collar or hemline or “broken heart” lapels, one half on either side of neatly tailored jackets. There’s precedent for these kinds of antics. The house founder made a life jacket for his 1989 Cruise Me Baby collection that looked a lot like the vests stored under plane seats “in case of emergency.” Riffing on that idea, Scott added a life preserver ring to the jacket hem of a tweed skirt suit, and cut a trench in caution yellow with black raft handles where the epaulets should be.“Sometimes we feel like we’re drowning,” Scott continued, acknowledging the bad news stories clogging our feeds. “I’m sure you do. I know I do. But no matter what is going on, we have to save space for joy, right? The darker it is, the lighter I have to be.” Making good on that promise, he embellished his evening looks with honest-to-goodness pool floaties. The most inspired of the bunch included a strapless purple column cinched at the waist with the deflated ends of a pink raft, its pneumatic ends creating a train, and another strapless number that was accompanied by a Lilo stole.By the end, Imaan Hammam’s look was more of a floatation device than gown, but that was Scott’s point. Anyone who could use a little buoying up, Scott’s your pool boy.
22 September 2022
The appointment of Jeremy Scott to Moschino was self-evidently a brilliant conjunction of fashion spirit animals from his first very Golden Arches look (even if some who detested it then only eventually came around). In the eight years since, Scott’s codes and those of the house have meshed so inextricably, most especially in menswear, that it’s hard to imagine a convincing successor should the American ever choose to step down. And while this evening’s collection starred the Scott-revived artistry of Tony Viramontes, whose fluidly beguiling fashion illustrations patterned this collection, its essence was tangibly Scott/Moschino.This was Scott’s first all-menswear show since joining the house. Hitherto he has always sprinkled resort belles amongst his butch menswear bros. This only served to accentuate the confident continuity inherent in Scott’s menswear: before this partnership with Viramontes’s estate there were collections with Judy Blame in 2017 and Gilbert & George in 2016 that featured similar pentimento experiments in layered illustrated texture. Scott said Madonna had regaled him with stories of her ’80s high-jinx with Viramontes, and the artist also was engaged with the designer’s beloved Buffalo movement. So this fresh collaboration made perfect thematic sense, while the collection itself remained tangibly all-Scott. As he said afterwards: “You will have different themes and inspirations. But I’m always trying to bring my own love, passion and ways of doing things to it.” After what seems like a way-too-long absence, this return of Moschino-via-Scott to its home turf was delightful.
19 June 2022
In the long ago days of the late 1960s, when flight attendants were still called stewardesses, a pair of them wrote an “uninhibited” memoirCoffee, Tea, or Me?recounting sexy escapades at 35,000 feet. It was a sensation and a national bestseller, only it wasn’t real. The book was commissioned by the American Airlines PR team.Decades later, though, we still dream about the heyday of air travel, and never more so than now. In 2022, airplanes are having a moment. Fights with mask-refusers and seatmates who wear shorts aside, everybody wants to be up in the air after being homebound by the pandemic for two years, Jeremy Scott included. His men’s resort collection for Moschino channeled the jet-set with its psychedelic prints and beach sarongs, and his women’s collection follows the same flight path.The colorful swirling prints of his men’s reappear here alongside mod, space-aged separates. It’s all aerodynamic A-line shapes, with the addition of patchwork crochet flares and slip dresses. The Moschino gal is headed to her holidays in Honolulu or St. Tropez, not on some hub-and-spoke overnighter for a business meeting. To ratchet up the verisimilitude Scott cast models who conjure ’60s celebrity icons like Diana Ross and Sharon Tate. With her ironed hair, Valentine gives very good Cher.The glamour of air travel may indeed be a mirage, a fever dream that lingers in the collective unconscious from watching one too many episodes ofMad Men.The Coffee, Tea, or Me?author was a public relations copywriter, but one of the stewardesses who posed as its memoirist was so charmed by the good life of fame that she legally changed her name to her book cover pseudonym. Scott’s transporting vision has its own playful allure.
9 June 2022
Jeremy Scott was high off a face-to-face with Dame Joan Collins at his London book party last week when he sat down to talk about his new resort 2023 menswear. After two years of COVID lockdowns, international travel is once again a fact of life for the Moschino creative director. After swinging London he was headed to Milan to prep his women’s resort and men’s spring offerings. Travel is the theme he took up this time around, but make no mistake, this isn’t a collection of easy-wearing in-flight sweatsuits. “I was thinking about the late ’60s, when travel was still glam and had more punch to it,” he confirmed.For the Moschino fan who’s resumed air hopping around the Mediterranean and other sunny locales there are lively suits and separates in a trippy Op art pattern and a hand-drawn destination print. Matching sets (vest and bermudas; windbreaker, button-down, and short-shorts) are modeled with a full complement of travel bags. Really driving home the collection’s getaway vibes is the array of sarongs, which Scott likes for both casual situations and more formal ones. In the first case, he suggests a sarong with a pink dip-dyed jean jacket, and in the second, it accompanies a tuxedo jacket picked out with mirrored sequins.They’re not boundary-erasing like the wrap skirts, but the collection’s other new-ish silhouettes are the full-legged pants Scott cut high-waisted with pleats, or low and flat-front. They look smart with strappy sandals in bright colors. The Moschino fan who’s landlocked can wear them with lug-soled boots.
16 May 2022
Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is prompting a lot of discussion: What’s fashion’s role in a crisis like this? What’s the correct tone to strike on the runway? Should designers provide an escape? A balm? A rallying cry? Jeremy Scott, who found himself the closer on a day when all anyone could talk about was the outbreak of war 1,000 miles away (Milan is to Kyiv as New York City is to Minneapolis), opted for escape.Conceived months ago, his Moschino set replicated the bedroom scene from Stanley Kubrick’s2001: A Space Odyssey, down to the wall moldings and the Renaissance paintings. Backstage Scott wore a sweatshirt that read “Gilt Without Guilt.” Clearly, he’s been craving some opulence. “I was thinking about the furniture you’d find in a mansion: the Chesterfield dresser, grandfather clocks, picture frames, Persian rugs, birdcages,” he explained.Pity the poor model who was a Coromandel screen, but there were other funny residential allusions, starting with an update to Franco Moschino’s famous “dinner suit” featuring real cutlery for fastenings. Adapting and expanding on that language, Scott showed a Stephen Jones-designed hat in the form of a painting spotlight, a handbag with a fancy toilet flush, and a bustier made from a metal tray and two well-placed soup tureens.The audience lapped it up, if you’ll pardon the pun, eager for the distraction and apparently none too troubled by the yawning income gap, even if now feels like the moment for a little Jean-Jacques “Eat the Rich” Rousseau. In any case, other looks—a cocktail number embroidered with crystal chandeliers, Bella Hadid’s keyhole LBD—trod more lightly on the reference material.Scott came out for his bow in the movie’s iconic red spacesuit. Half a century after its release,2001: A Space Odysseygets a 92% ranking on Rotten Tomatoes for its “delicate, poetic meditation on the ingenuity—and folly—of mankind.” Like the film, this collection exhibited a bit of both.
24 February 2022
“I want more life.” So said the replicant Roy Batty in the originalBlade Runner. Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic was just one part of the source material Jeremy Scott quoted in his pre-spring notes; the Sgt. Pepper’s references are a lot more obvious, though he also mentionedA Clockwork Orange. But Batty’s comment aligns with Scott’s approach to this collection, and to fashion in general. “I never let an opportunity go to express myself with the bravado people expect from me,” he said.This collection certainly isn’t short on bravado, what with its crayon box–bright color blocking and its Victor Vasarely–inspired optic prints. Scott applied the color blocking to tailoring—trad double-breasted suits and bandleader uniforms alike—and to softer jersey pieces in playful trompe l’oeil, a technique Franco Moschino returned to often. The Vasarely-esque prints were applied to dresses, where the artist’s spatial depth experiments accentuated the models’ natural curves.Because Scott never does anything by half measures, these super-pigmented, highly graphic clothes were accompanied by bondage masks or elaborate face paint by the makeup artist Kabuki. “They can be a little sinister, a little sexy, a little mysterious—they can have all these different contexts,” Scott said. “I think that’s something that I played with here because of the way things have evolved and what we’ve experienced, and how I can express that through my work.” As we round the corner on Covid Year Three, Scott’s hyperbolic fashion will find its audience.
9 December 2021
“I want more life.” So said the replicant Roy Batty in the originalBlade Runner. Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic was just one part of the source material Jeremy Scott quoted in his pre-spring notes; the Sgt. Pepper’s references are a lot more obvious, though he also mentionedA Clockwork Orange. But Batty’s comment aligns with Scott’s approach to this collection, and to fashion in general. “I never let an opportunity go to express myself with the bravado people expect from me,” he said.This collection certainly isn’t short on bravado, what with its crayon box–bright color blocking and its Victor Vasarely–inspired optic prints. Scott applied the color blocking to tailoring—trad double-breasted suits and bandleader uniforms alike—and to softer jersey pieces in playful trompe l’oeil, a technique Franco Moschino returned to often. The Vasarely-esque prints were applied to dresses, where the artist’s spatial depth experiments accentuated the models’ natural curves.Because Scott never does anything by half measures, these super-pigmented, highly graphic clothes were accompanied by bondage masks or elaborate face paint by the makeup artist Kabuki. “They can be a little sinister, a little sexy, a little mysterious—they can have all these different contexts,” Scott said. “I think that’s something that I played with here because of the way things have evolved and what we’ve experienced, and how I can express that through my work.” As we round the corner on Covid Year Three, Scott’s hyperbolic fashion will find its audience.
9 December 2021
Last week at the amfAR gala, Madonna presented Jeremy Scott with the Award of Courage for his commitment to the fight against HIV/AIDS. “She was so early on the scene of supporting the gay community. In a time when Lil Nas X is topping the charts singing about bottoming, let’s not forget that there was a time when this didn’t exist,” Scott said on a video call from his kitchen in Los Angeles, reflecting on his milestone. “There was a time when the only person who was a safe refuge was Madonna.”Growing up, Scott was subjected to severe homophobia. “There wasn’t a day that went by that I wasn’t called a derogatory name, hit, punched, or spat on because of the way I looked and the way people perceived me. Which was gay. I couldn’t control wanting to express myself from the way I dressed. It was so integral to who I am.” Flicking through his Moschino pre-fall 2022 men’s collection on a shared screen, he kept repeating the same words: “It’s about my own fantasy about how I dress, how I’ve dressed in the past, and how I imagine myself.”In many ways, the collection was very now. Between Scott’s cyberspace-y colors and textures and the tactility of his hand-spun weaving and quilting, there was a contrast pertinent to the ambivalent desires of a digital youth. Take for instance the hats with demon horns, which brought a popular social media filter into reality, or the robot bear motif, cuddly and mechanical all at once. And yet it was exactly what Scott said: bold, boisterous clothes founded in the timeless youth-driven impulse to express yourself, especially if you feel different.Scott imbued the collection with tokens from his own life. His studded leather chokers from the 1990s, certain elements of grunge, a fair amount of techno, and the bling of the 2000s. Through fashion glasses, those things were easily targeted at the TikTok generation, so mysteriously nostalgic for a time they never experienced. From a more universal point of view, they were the elements that continue to make up the thrifty homemade wardrobes of any provincial teenager of a more flamboyant conviction than his peers.Fantasy Boysread a graphic on a sweatshirt. “So much is going on via screen: fantasy lives, fantasy boys, dressing as you want to dress. That’s why I placed it in outer space and made these space cowboys,” Scott said, referring to the backdrops of his look book.
In a time when young generations are dealing with the dichotomies between the digital world and reality—and often trying to manifest one into the other—those fantasies felt like a love letter to individuality. A collection like this may not move mountains in fashion, but any gay teenager dying to express himself will find a refuge here.
16 November 2021
Jeremy Scott has had better days. He planned a big show for his latest Moschino collection smack dab in the middle of Bryant Park. The location had meaning, the collection was an homage to his early years in New York, circa the 1990s. Back in those days Bryant Park was the heart and soul of Fashion Week, only then there were giant tents. Moschino had no rain plan, and—wouldn’t you know it?—there was rain. Not torrents, but enough to make umbrellas all but obligatory for the audience.“It’s very ladies who lunch, but it’s also nursery rhymes, so it’s baby lady,” Scott said backstage of his seasonal theme. “There’s also a wink toThe Nanny,” he went on, because, “Fran Drescher wore so much Franco Moschino, iconic little suits that were such a signature of the brand and that moment.” Scott is the king of camp, soThe Nannyangle had potential—who wouldn’t love a Drescher sighting? But baby lady? Power suits and kindercare are an unlikely combination. His tailoring was cut to seduce with cropped jackets and short, fitted skirts, so why the toy elephants, giraffes, and seals prancing across the quilted satin and tweed?Scott has engaged with pressing issues in the past, like the time he made a cardboard collection that addressed the need for sustainable design or fall 2016’s Bonfire of the Vanities takedown of the thought police. He also knows how to throw a rip-roaring good time; remember, most recently, the Price Is Right show for fall 2019. The rain didn’t help, but this show missed on both fun and poignancy.
9 September 2021
A ladylike hamburger skirt suit? A hotdog dress with a boule cape for bread? A chocolate sundae bustier with a fishtail skirt and a cherry hat on top? For pre? “Sometimes I forget that maybe I might be a little twisted, because it’s all so natural,” Jeremy Scott laughed, talking about his Moschino resort and men’s collections on a video call from Los Angeles. “It’s enthusiastic, it’s genuine, it’s pure. It’s maybe a little bit naïve. It sounds stupid to say that about oneself, but if I think about it in terms of everyone else… Yeah! It’s a pre-collection and I have a motherfucking hotdog dress!”The inspired films that Scott has created for Moschino during the lockdown period may have been escapist, but that sensibility has always underpinned his work. Through the crisis, Scott evaded direct references to mid- and post-pandemic dressing, drawing instead on the power of optimism to see him—and us—through. There was, however, an irony to the way he elevated symbols of mundanity in this collection, which felt so symptomatic of our moment in time, when the idea of dropping into a diner or going out for a hotdog—those mid-century postcards of American lifestyle—seemed positively exotic.For Scott, life is a musical, or at least it should be. After last season’s museum spectacular, Jungle Red, he wanted to work more with Karen Elson. Following Radio Redhead, Vol. 1, the cover album she released in December, she had asked Scott what covers he thought she should record for a potential volume two. Those conversations inspired Lightning Strikes, the all-American tribute to classic musicals that framed the Moschino resort and men’s collections, and culminated in a performance of the original song of the same title, which Elson recorded for an upcoming record of her own material.The film, which was shot on the Universal Studios lot, stars Elson as a waitress, who dreams herself away from the hustle and bustle of her diner shift, with patrons, cooks, and fellow waitresses transforming into her backup dancers. She sings a cover of Chic’s “Everybody Dance” before she hits the street to an interpretation of “Funkytown” by Lipps Inc (with a 50-person dance sequence), and finally makes it to a theater where a pinball-themed performance crescendos into a music video for “Lightning Strikes.” “And then it was all a dream, like any good Hollywood movie!” Scott said.
29 June 2021
A ladylike hamburger skirt suit? A hotdog dress with a boule cape for bread? A chocolate sundae bustier with a fishtail skirt and a cherry hat on top? For pre? “Sometimes I forget that maybe I might be a little twisted, because it’s all so natural,” Jeremy Scott laughed, talking about his Moschino resort and men’s collections on a video call from Los Angeles. “It’s enthusiastic, it’s genuine, it’s pure. It’s maybe a little bit naïve. It sounds stupid to say that about oneself, but if I think about it in terms of everyone else… Yeah! It’s a pre-collection and I have a motherfucking hotdog dress!”The inspired films that Scott has created for Moschino during the lockdown period may have been escapist, but that sensibility has always underpinned his work. Through the crisis, Scott evaded direct references to mid- and post-pandemic dressing, drawing instead on the power of optimism to see him—and us—through. There was, however, an irony to the way he elevated symbols of mundanity in this collection, which felt so symptomatic of our moment in time, when the idea of dropping into a diner or going out for a hotdog—those mid-century postcards of American lifestyle—seemed positively exotic.For Scott, life is a musical, or at least it should be. After last season’s museum spectacular, Jungle Red, he wanted to work more with Karen Elson. Following Radio Redhead, Vol. 1, the cover album she released in December, she had asked Scott what covers he thought she should record for a potential volume two. Those conversations inspired Lightning Strikes, the all-American tribute to classic musicals that framed the Moschino resort and men’s collections, and culminated in a performance of the original song of the same title, which Elson recorded for an upcoming record of her own material.The film, which was shot on the Universal Studios lot, stars Elson as a waitress, who dreams herself away from the hustle and bustle of her diner shift, with patrons, cooks, and fellow waitresses transforming into her backup dancers. She sings a cover of Chic’s “Everybody Dance” before she hits the street to an interpretation of “Funkytown” by Lipps Inc (with a 50-person dance sequence), and finally makes it to a theater where a pinball-themed performance crescendos into a music video for “Lightning Strikes.” “And then it was all a dream, like any good Hollywood movie!” Scott said.
29 June 2021
If you really wanted to (and who wouldn’t?), you could see the memory of Marcus Schenkenberg’s purple short-shorts from 1989 within the scuba meggings of look eight in the Moschino resort collection. At some point during this travel- and fun-restricted year, Jeremy Scott had been reminiscing about the fateful moment when the German supermodel was first discovered on Venice Beach while doing a dance routine to Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It” on white roller skates. “It iseve-ry-thing,” Scott said on a video call from Los Angeles, reflecting on the free-spirited lifestyle of the be-muscled boardwalk. For those who’ve killed time in lockdown working on their beach bodies, Scott is here to answer your call.His collection is an ode to the surfer physique, with garments that hug its every chiseled contour. The scuba and scuba-esque materials that pay homage to the surfer uniform set the tone for some rather bold proposals to lift our fashion spirits. There’s a skin-tight romper with lapels, which Scott suggests could be a post-pandemic alternative to the pre-pandemic office suit, and there are bike shorts in patchwork power prints structured to evoke the illusion of wearing a tiny purple Speedo. Scott continued elaborating on the vests he brought back last season with a denim number featuring sun motifs (“I’m still very in-vest-ed”). And what about a bona-fide Moschino surfboard to satisfy your limited-edition needs?“I’ve surfed in Hawaii a few times, but I’m not a surfer by any means,” Scott disclaimed, pointing viewers’ attention to the faux tropical backdrops of his look book. Like Moschino’s surfer wardrobe, which by no means calls for waves, they demonstrate the ersatz escapism that’s become a reality in a world where most of us still can’t travel. “It’s the essence of what most people’s holiday travel is right now: screensaver fantasy,” he said. But between his body-conscious bathing suits and gilded trousers, Scott’s proposal for that new world isn’t all bold and gold. Takes on “the preppy tropes of menswear” such as check and floral shorts suits, timeless hibiscus-print shirts, and a bomber-jacket-and-shorts combo plastered with suns and smiley faces, offer an easy and casual approach to optimistic dressing.
27 May 2021
Possessed by the mad spirit of Franco Moschino, Jeremy Scott has become a master of meta. He had to design this collection in tandem with the short film he wanted to make, with every model, look and dimension planned to precision before the clothes ever existed. There we were, sitting in front of screens as Scott knew we would, watching a digital show about a real-life salon show, which turned out to be a show within a show, all its players part of the line-up. In this imposed digital moment in fashion and life, Scott’s theater was a thought-provoking image of our current surreal lives: layers and layers of trompe l’oeil, in garments as well as their unreal surroundings. And all this as we gear up for our post-pandemic return to…reality!“I wanted to do things in film that you can’t do live,” Scott said on a video call from Los Angeles, reflecting on the two digital showcases he’s created during the lockdown period. Last season he designed a puppet-sized collection for a complex and fantastic marionette show. This time, he called upon 36 star models, It girls and pin-ups as diverse as Maye Musk (who presented the salon show) to Precious Lee, Dita Von Teese, and Winnie Harlow (who attended it), and Hailey Bieber, Miranda Kerr, and Shalom Harlow (who modeled in it). They staged a multi-dimensional portrayal of a lady’s everyday life: outfits for business, leisure, upkeep, travels and balls; all activities we haven’t had a reason to dress for over the past year.Even for a wardrobe designed for coming out of lockdown, the Old Hollywood Technicolor glamour of Scott’s collection—titled Jungle Red after the name of the nail varnish du jour in the 1939 George Cukor filmThe Women—was decidedly extravagant. “I guess I live in such a fantasy land I didn’t really think of it that way. I mean, you have to get dressed anyway, don’t you?” Scott quipped, rolling his eyes at continued fashion forecasts for comfort-wear. “Comfortschmomfort! What we need now more than ever is fantasy and glamour and things that make you feel wonderful, and I don’t think sweatpants do that.”
25 February 2021
Backed up by the vaccine’s fragile promise of freedom come fall, there’s a certain poetry to the new Moschino collection. Released from a year-long period of domestic confinement in which everyone has taken up some sort of creative outlet, Jeremy Scott’s men emerge from their amateur art caves covered in paint. Appropriately for their big return to reality, they are dressed to the nines, but their formal endeavors bear evidence of the transformation we’ve all experienced during this strange time.The past year had given Scott—a classic movie buff—an excuse to surrender to the silver screen. “You’ve been on CNN, I stay on TCM,” he quipped on a video call from Los Angeles, on the topic of current U.S. political affairs so inescapable on our collective radar that further reflections were unnecessary. Trying to stay zen in quarantine last year, Scott also took up leaf-painting, plucking his garden dry of elephant ears which he painted in various graphic motifs reflective of the cartoonish side of his aesthetic.You could see his Moschino collection as a manifestation of those two influences: a meeting between the precision of Old Hollywood tailoring and the spontaneity of hand-painting. The lines of overcoats, tuxedos, and suiting with a 1940s persuasion were enhanced with Post-Impressionist brushstrokes, in some cases creating trompe l’oeil effects that Scott attributed to his passion for the study of painting.If his patterns were a Post-Impressionist expression, as the collection notes suggested, the garments echoed for our moment in time the genre’s augmented view of life: that confinement feeling of creating your own world within the real world, something Scott also reflected in the fake-look city sets of the images he shot, inspired by film noir. The contemporary expression of his premise materialized in nylon tracksuits where the retro chevron graphics had been replaced with brushstrokes, taking the garment into unexplored territory.Scott said he wanted to wear every piece of the collection. By the time it hits stores, he might even be able to wear it outside the house. “I’ve always had the volume a little more turned up, but I hope it’s something more people will have a hunger for,” he said, referring to the exuberance of his designs: “That there’s an explosion of creativity of expression when people feel the freedom of being together again.”
14 January 2021
If the social revolts of the previous century created a new world of subdivisions, 2020 will be remembered for the opposite. Now, nobody wants to be grouped by stereotypes of any kind. Or, as Jeremy Scott put it: “Boxes are for shoes. They’re not for people.” As we draw the curtain on this monumental year, you could approach his Moschino collection—his last of 2020—as the simplified perspective on that philosophy: Take the archetypes of the old world, cut them up, and collage them together.“I love collage as an art form,” Scott said on a video call from his home in Los Angeles. “It’s how I usually work when I’m doing collections—illustrating them, taking pictures, cutting them apart, putting things together.” On every level, it’s how he’s been working since he relocated to California 20 years ago. Before we all became pandemic-time experts at long-distance collaboration, Scott’s creative process came together as a sort of collage in itself. “They were shipping things to me, I’d make notes, send them back.”It’s why this collection looked so screen-friendly. Like his audience, Scott often has to look at every piece he designs through a screen before he gets to see it in real life. “Something that maybe in person is not bad, when you see it in a picture, you might see it’s so black you can’t even decipher the details.” By default, he already understands the lesson every designer has learned in 2020: In the digital age, clothes first have to pop off the screen then take corporeal form.Observing Franco Moschino’s penchant for messing with the stereotypes of the traditional wardrobe, Scott went a step further. He Frankensteined his way through fashion’s favorite archetypes—the lady who lunches, the businesswoman, the biker chick, and so on—dissecting them, collaging them, and bringing them back to life in defiant manifestations. The trench coat, the biker jacket, and the jean jacket—staples loaded with societal connotations—found new ways to unify and harmonize in a surgical symphony Scott called “collisions of archetypes,” all modeled by Winnie Harlow.“You might have the tweed dress, but she’s got the biker lapels and corset sprouting out of it,” he said, referring to a look Alexis Colby wouldn’t have turned down. “You thought she was a good girl, but she’s actually a little naughty. And I think that’s the truth of it. Everyone is not 100%.
” It was a simple idea in a time when clarity is a luxury, delivered with all the teddy-bear motifs and faux-fur cartoon eyes that Scott finds evoke the comfort of nostalgia. “People are multifaceted and complex—that’s always been true, but maybe now it needs to be more visible for people,” he reflected. “I also just thought they were kind of cute clothes.”
9 December 2020
In early 2018, when QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory, was still in its naissance, Jeremy Scott produced a collection for his eponymous brand in newsprint black-and-white. It was a takedown of fake news, with headlines screaming “chaos” and “scandal.” Oh, to return to those halcyon days. QAnon is sending two supporters to Congress in January; to quote FiveThirtyEight, it’s “found a place in the GOP.” Naturally, Scott found himself returning to the topic of communication tools, from manual typewriters to our digital era’s hashtags and at signs, at Moschino this season. “I think there’s something troubling in the way information has become so divided,” Scott said.The concept played out as graphic elements on unlikely pieces such as a shawl-collar suit and a matching jacket and shorts set, as well as on sportier items like puffers and hoodies. The 1940s-ish tailoring got the more analog treatments and the streetwear the Twitterstorm of information. The tweets are blurred and glitchy, the obvious message being that we are subject to and serving up distortions and untruths. A trench featuring printed collages of 1980s and ’90s tabloids in a brown, blue, and boysenberry color scheme felt downright wholesome by comparison.Will the system hold? Scott is a dyed-in-the-wool optimist; he finds ways to keep things light even when he’s considering dark themes. The fact that he’s unafraid to face those themes and that he also understands fashion is its own communication tool—that’s what makes him a necessary voice.
2 December 2020
The vigilant spectator would watch the elaborate puppet show Jeremy Scott created for Moschino this season and wonder: Was the designer painting a picture of our turbulent times through metaphors of political puppeteering, “strings attached,” and questions of real versus fake? Were his designs—couture-level garments that revealed their own construction—an image of much-needed truth in the public forum? “You’re totally reading into it,” he said on a video call from his home in Los Angeles as we both burst out in laughter. “The best thing I could do for everyone who is stressed about the election, the pandemic, social unrest, and the future was to give the gift of fantasy and take us away from all of it for a few minutes; let us enjoy this little fashion world of ours.”Weeks before lockdown became a reality, Scott had already decided that his spring Moschino collection would celebrate the virtues of haute couture, more relevant now than ever. “I was thinking about how that is such a human, emotional, tactile thing: time, dedication, and the connection to design history,” he noted. After quarantine set in, Scott began to suspect that a runway show would not be in the cards this month. Inspired by the couture-centric nature of his research, he looked to the Théâtre de la Mode, the troupe of miniature couture creations the designers of Paris sent on the road after World War II to save their businesses from financial ruin amid scarce supplies and clients left unable to travel. Then he called Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, the creator of the Muppets.“What would be the best way for me to give the same experience that you’re used to, coming to see my shows live?” Scott wondered. “How could I give you that whimsy, that magic, that fantasy?” Along with the Creature Shop, he created marionettes of favorite models to wear the 40 looks, which were first made in life-size versions and then scaled down to fit the 30-inch puppets that “walked” the show, violins playing softly in the background. There were also editors for the front row. It may have been miniature, but it was a huge undertaking, more expensive, in fact, than a fashion show. “In April I had to pull the trigger and say, I have to stay with this, even if everything goes back to normal and everyone else has [runway] shows again,” Scott recalled.
26 September 2020
“All those people who were, like, crying about being bored [during lockdown]? I was like ‘Oh my God, they’re so obnoxious.’ ” So reported Jeremy Scott from L.A., where he’s been working, working, working to keep his hand on the Moschino tiller from afar and keep his own label up and running: designing and doing. However, had he had a lockdown of leisure, Scott said he wouldn’t have wasted it moaning about being bored: “I would watch all these movies that I’ve never got to watch. I’d read all the books I want to but never have. I would study all the stuff that I never got to study. What is wrong with people?”Not that Scott wishes he’d spent his limbo any other way: “I’m lucky because I had stuff that I love to do.” This menswear collection’s creation pre-dates the emergence of the coronavirus—“it’s from the great Before! The old world”—and references stuff that Scott has studied and is passionate about. “I love Memphis. And I love Sottsass. He’s my favorite designer of all time, for sure, hands down. My favorite designer of any kind.”Ettore Sottsass named his famous design collective after a Bob Dylan lyric that played during the meeting that led to the group’s formation. Here Scott used a similarly fleeting associative starting point—the thoughts of Memphis playing in his mind—then applied modernized elements of its highly geometric aesthetic to the formation of a fresh Moschino/Scott template. From Memphis he zoomed off both sportily and suit-ily to other territories: spacescapes, zodiacal prints, antique sculpture, polka dots. And he deliciously collided the Dad with the Rad in some powerfully toned chenille cardigans.“I like to bring some humor, joy, color, and playfulness,” said Scott: “something that might help put a smile on your face.” So said a designer who’s most definitely not bored about a collection that’s most definitely not boring.
15 July 2020
Moschino could not host a presentation this season due to the coronavirus pandemic. In these extenuating circumstances, Vogue Runway has made an exception to its policy and is writing about this collection via photos and remote interviews.News that the European Union may ban American travelers due to U.S. coronavirus failures has major implications for Jeremy Scott, the creative director of Moschino. Scott calls California home, and Moschino is based in Milan. Fittings for the spring 2021 show scheduled for September begin in a week and will be done entirely virtually. “This time is about finding my way around all the different obstacles, finding creativity and positivity, and trying to keep being upbeat about it,” Scott said.The resort offering pictured here is in keeping with those sentiments, like so many of the Moschino collections Scott has designed before; his aesthetic and the house’s aesthetic are as simpatico as they come. But, in fact, this is his second go-around at the season; the first had to be scrapped. “Truthfully, I had started one and realized it wasn’t going to be the right mood,” Scott explained. It was early in the lockdown and he was worried about his colleagues in Italy, where the pandemic was hitting hard. What he came up with and what you see here was a love letter “from and to Moschino.”There are polka dots, smiley faces and peace signs, Italian flag motifs, and the slogan tee—“I don’t speak Italian, but I do speak Moschino”—from Scott’s 2014 debut at the label. “I just wanted to keep it joyful and alive and true to OG fans and new ones,” Scott said. We are living in a time of confusion and uncertainty. It asks of us no small amount of optimism and even more adaptability. Scott demonstrated both here.
26 June 2020
This wassooo’80s. Just not the ’80s you’d expect. Jeremy Scott, left arm in a pink sling following a slip en route to the gym, was thinking about the French Revolution and Marie Antoinette. He laid it out thus: “Well on the geopolitical spectrum, thinking about the 1780s and what’s going on today globally: Are the Hong Kong protests against an oppressive government? In Chile they’re protesting against a rise in subway fares; obviously my home country’s gotta lotta shit goin’ on, and y’all Brex-exiting…there’s a lot happening.” “And thinking about that,” he added, “the turmoil is very similar in a way to…” To “Let them eat…?” he was asked. “Moschino!” he answered.Now it must be acknowledged that for a luxury fashion house to ape the outrageous aesthetic of elite entitlement that came before the most influential democratic uprising in history, then frame it as political comment, could be seen as a case of having your cake and eating it too. Scott, however, both negotiated this double standard and got to zhoosh up those staid old shapes by clashing his Marie Antoinette pannier dresses with the most emblematic womenswear garment of the radical 1960s, the miniskirt. Scott’s mini pannier starred under maxi hair in various iterations: gold brocade on denim, white biker, black biker, and toile de Jouy. This archetypally 18th-century pattern was used across the collection with the original faces of its cavorting courtiers transformed into wide-eyed anime characters that made you think of the excess of Harajuku dress.Scott extended his whistle-stop romp through bygone iconography with bikers, skirts, frock coats, and dresses made of richly colored patches of velvet furniture fabric, and apparently tapestried princess scenes featuring more anime ingenues. The cake-based finale that was served in several gut-busting courses was hilarious and provided total visual satiety.So despite all that fighting talk at the top, how can a fashion show change the world? “All I can do is offer respite,” said Scott. “Even if you continue to fight, you need that moment of joy. We all need something uplifting. My role on this earth has only ever been to spread joy and bring happiness.” Proof of this was how in her dress of icing roses Gigi Hadid had perhaps never looked so elated on the runway, twirling giddily to whoops from the crowd. They say a moment on the lips equals a lifetime on the hips—and the hips on show here were as wide as the runway itself.
Yet everyone in the Moschino salon tonight roared and whooped from the pleasure of gorging on serving after serving of Scott’s inventive confections.
20 February 2020
The ailing MTA could use a guy like Jeremy Scott. His Moschino show at the Transit Museum tonight was the best time anybody’s had on the New York subway in, well, just about ever. Negotiating the space was apparently a year in the process, but Scott knew it was the place to put on his Moschino pre-fall show. “The subway’s the quintessential New York backdrop,” he said backstage, “plus, it’s a mix of what I do: high/low, uptown/downtown.” New York’s streets often get compared to a runway, but the metaphor’s not quite right. The subway, with its cramped seating, tough doors, and interminable delays is a much better analogy. With its all-walks-of-life passengers, the people watching is nonpareil, too, though it’s perhaps not quite at the Moschino level.Scott specializes in a sort of high-def hyperrealism. It was in full effect this evening as he worked his way through a subway car’s worth of New York subcultures to a soundtrack that included the familiar warning, “stand clear of the closing doors,” and an appearance by Showtime dancers. The Moschino frontman worked on the macro level: puffer jackets were super supersized, as were baseball caps, the house logo, and a gargantuan red backpack that seems destined to out-meme last week’s giant yellow Opening Ceremony tote (see @newyorknico if you missed it). But, really, no urban uniform was safe from Scott’s tweaking. Humble enough color-blocked track suits were converted into cocktail dresses and gowns, and otherwise staid trenches and leather jackets were finished with giant Moschino Couture labels. The portable music player of choice circa now is an iPhone 11—arguably they’re tools for shutting other people out—but boomboxes are much more visually interesting and they’re communal, too, so he put them on outerwear and hoodies.There may be critics who say that that urban motif and others like it (the piles of gold chains, the Timberland-ish boots) aren’t Scott’s to use. He would respectfully disagree. As a Pratt student and a bright-eyed kid from Kansas he spent four years underground—the G and L trains were his lines—and he’s identified as “the people’s designer” ever since. The good feelings were right there on the surface: the subway is a beautiful thing, not least of all because it brings so many of us together. If you haven’t gone for a ride lately, give it a try.
9 December 2019
The ailing MTA could use a guy like Jeremy Scott. His Moschino show at the Transit Museum tonight was the best time anybody’s had on the New York subway in, well, just about ever. Negotiating the space was apparently a year in the process, but Scott knew it was the place to put on his Moschino pre-fall show. “The subway’s the quintessential New York backdrop,” he said backstage, “plus, it’s a mix of what I do: high/low, uptown/downtown.” New York’s streets often get compared to a runway, but the metaphor’s not quite right. The subway, with its cramped seating, tough doors, and interminable delays is a much better analogy. With its all-walks-of-life passengers, the people watching is nonpareil, too, though it’s perhaps not quite at the Moschino level.Scott specializes in a sort of high-def hyperrealism. It was in full effect this evening as he worked his way through a subway car’s worth of New York subcultures to a soundtrack that included the familiar warning, “stand clear of the closing doors,” and an appearance by Showtime dancers. The Moschino frontman worked on the macro level: puffer jackets were super supersized, as were baseball caps, the house logo, and a gargantuan red backpack that seems destined to out-meme last week’s giant yellow Opening Ceremony tote (see @newyorknico if you missed it). But, really, no urban uniform was safe from Scott’s tweaking. Humble enough color-blocked track suits were converted into cocktail dresses and gowns, and otherwise staid trenches and leather jackets were finished with giant Moschino Couture labels. The portable music player of choice circa now is an iPhone 11—arguably they’re tools for shutting other people out—but boomboxes are much more visually interesting and they’re communal, too, so he put them on outerwear and hoodies.There may be critics who say that that urban motif and others like it (the piles of gold chains, the Timberland-ish boots) aren’t Scott’s to use. He would respectfully disagree. As a Pratt student and a bright-eyed kid from Kansas he spent four years underground—the G and L trains were his lines—and he’s identified as “the people’s designer” ever since. The good feelings were right there on the surface: the subway is a beautiful thing, not least of all because it brings so many of us together. If you haven’t gone for a ride lately, give it a try.
9 December 2019
FromThe Price Is Rightto Pablo Picasso in six months. Jeremy Scott makes no distinction between low culture and high; all of it is ripe for the picking. “They’re all icons,” he said backstage. Vanna White and Françoise Gilot probably won’t get equal treatment in the history books, but you’ve gotta admire Scott’s enthusiasm and verve. When he lands on a concept, he is 100% committed.Dedicated to Picasso and his muses, this collection was no exception. Rather appropriately the first look appeared to be a riff onGirl Before a Mirror. Later Bella Hadid played the Harlequin, and Kaia Gerber was the Girl With a Mandolin. The model-as-canvas idea allowed Scott to play around with two-dimensionality, a concept that produced one of his most memorable collections, Spring 2017’s life-size paper-doll clothes. This time the look that really got iPhones clicking was Cara Taylor’s; she was both painting and frame.Thinking about Picasso led Scott to an extended riff on bullfighting, toreador costumes, and Stephen Jones’s brilliant headgear—the milliner gets a special commendation for the Cubist bull mask. There was also a flamenco aside that produced a fabulous red gown with brushed-on polka dots. Scott said backstage that all of the prints were hand-painted in the studio before being digitized. Oftentimes his shows come with a societal critique. The paper dolls were a takedown of our social-media-mad culture, andThe Price Is Righttook on hyper-consumerism. If there was a message here, it seemed to be about mastery. Picasso is high up in the pantheon. Scott has confidence to go there, and that’s an engaging thing.
19 September 2019
Something wickedly clever this way comes.Moschino’s Jeremy Scott is known for making his own rules, but, in rerouting the expected into the upside down—that is, by offering cinematic, scary movie–inspired clothing for the wrong season—he went further off-script than maybe ever before. Scott’s Los Angeles show was underpinned by a trip-down-memory-lane nostalgia, yet more importantly, it was literally screaming with humor and modernity. It all worked; the payoff was kind of brilliant.Held at Universal Studios—along the same set that served as Wisteria Lane onDesperate Housewives—Scott sent forth his models as trick-or-treaters in a foggy twilight. There were references to horror-core galore:Redrumprinted vertically on a dress (The Shining); neon green leather with trompe l’oeil stitches (Frankenstein); a model shrieking and banging on doors (an homage to Drew Barrymore’s character inScream, which Scott mentioned was one of the night’s main inspirations). Yet even though there were a lot of silver-screen throwbacks, the takeaway was veryStranger Things(season three airs in three weeks). It felt like suburbia blanketed in sugary faux-creepiness, a polychromaticEdward Scissorhands-ian moment for the Instagram era. “I wanted to take the most mundane, beautiful, manicured, perfect setting because that’s where the darkest things always happen,” said Scott.He suggested platform boots in pumpkin orange, extra-oversize sweatshirts sewn through with even more oversize ruffles, graphic trope-y tees and spider-web-studded moto jackets. A relatively subtle dress read “Trick or Chic.” At the finale, a “corpse bride” walked out, holes burned into the hem of her wedding gown. “Vera Wang can't have all the business!” Scott joked.The show was a little tough to see in the shadows, and the styling was as maxed out as it could be. What really resonated—and thrilled—was the popcorn smack of disruptiveness that Scott brought to the block. We live in a time where it’s almost impossible to get noticed, or, somewhat counterintuitively, we don’t knowwhatwill get noticed. Moschino is one of those brands where the viewer is mostly aware of what to anticipate, and this is where Scott so smartly surprised. Nobody saw it coming, and it made for absurd theater, as well as candy-for-thought. Why did he do it? “I mean, it’s always Halloween with me,” he said.
8 June 2019
Something wickedly clever this way comes.Moschino’s Jeremy Scott is known for making his own rules, but, in rerouting the expected into the upside down—that is, by offering cinematic, scary movie–inspired clothing for the wrong season—he went further off-script than maybe ever before. Scott’s Los Angeles show was underpinned by a trip-down-memory-lane nostalgia, yet more importantly, it was literally screaming with humor and modernity. It all worked; the payoff was kind of brilliant.Held at Universal Studios—along the same set that served as Wisteria Lane onDesperate Housewives—Scott sent forth his models as trick-or-treaters in a foggy twilight. There were references to horror-core galore:Redrumprinted vertically on a dress (The Shining); neon green leather with trompe l’oeil stitches (Frankenstein); a model shrieking and banging on doors (an homage to Drew Barrymore’s character inScream, which Scott mentioned was one of the night’s main inspirations). Yet even though there were a lot of silver-screen throwbacks, the takeaway was veryStranger Things(season three airs in three weeks). It felt like suburbia blanketed in sugary faux-creepiness, a polychromaticEdward Scissorhands-ian moment for the Instagram era. “I wanted to take the most mundane, beautiful, manicured, perfect setting because that’s where the darkest things always happen,” said Scott.He suggested platform boots in pumpkin orange, extra-oversize sweatshirts sewn through with even more oversize ruffles, graphic trope-y tees and spider-web-studded moto jackets. A relatively subtle dress read “Trick or Chic.” At the finale, a “corpse bride” walked out, holes burned into the hem of her wedding gown. “Vera Wang can't have all the business!” Scott joked.The show was a little tough to see in the shadows, and the styling was as maxed out as it could be. What really resonated—and thrilled—was the popcorn smack of disruptiveness that Scott brought to the block. We live in a time where it’s almost impossible to get noticed, or, somewhat counterintuitively, we don’t knowwhatwill get noticed. Moschino is one of those brands where the viewer is mostly aware of what to anticipate, and this is where Scott so smartly surprised. Nobody saw it coming, and it made for absurd theater, as well as candy-for-thought. Why did he do it? “I mean, it’s always Halloween with me,” he said.
8 June 2019
In anticipation of the upcoming Costume Institute exhibition,“Camp: Notes on Fashion,”we’ve digitized collections from which pieces were selected for the show or catalog. This collection was presented in February 2000 in Milan.“Witch one?” was the query scrawled across the set of this lighthearted Moschino show inspired byThe Wizard of Oz.The first model carried a house-shaped handbag, and her otherwise straightforward gray pencil skirt was appliquéd with a dog resembling Toto. Other references to the story included striped “witchy” stockings worn by models, pairs of mannequin legs sticking up from the floor, and oilcan hats à la the Tin Man. Inspired by the famous ruby slippers were sparkly shoes, capes, and dresses flashing with sequins. Western cowboy looks and flying-nun ensembles were puzzling outliers.Unlike Franco Moschino, his successor Rossella Jardini didn’t assume the role of commentator and critic, though she preserved the brand’s humor in a rather straightforward and mostly surface way. The campiest piece in this collection, according to the Costume Institute, was perhaps also the most poignant: an iron-shaped purse that could be seen as a nod to Franco Moschino’s white button-down shirt (also included in “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” fromSpring 1991) that featured iron “burns” and the punny legend “Too Much Irony.”
5 May 2019
In anticipation of the upcoming Costume Institute exhibition,“Camp: Notes on Fashion,”we’ve digitized collections from which pieces were selected for the show or catalog. This collection, Franco Moschino’s last, was presented on October 3, 1993, at the Teatro Nazionale in Milan.Franco Moschino was known for skewering fashion’s excesses (especially those of the 1980s), but no one loved the medium—from its humdrum to its most-glamorous aspects—more. This is a man who made a dress in the form of a shopping bag, worked measuring tapes into flower-embellished sleeves, crafted hats that looked like model airplanes, and didn’t shy away from send-ups of other designer’s work. (Chanel was a favorite target.) “I know the history, which is the reason I can joke,” he once toldThe New York Times.Moschino’s own history was on display in the fall of 1993. Concurrent withX Years of Chaos!, a 10-year retrospective of his work at the Museo della Permanente that later traveled, the designer made a return to the runway. Like the exhibition, this fashion show highlighted a decade of hits, from slogan-emblazoned bathing suits to pieces embellished with everything from roses made from zippers to Barbie-size garments. It was Moschino’s last show; in 1994, the designer, at just 44, died of AIDS complications.Moschino, who once purposively shooed models off the catwalk in the middle of the show, apparently to highlight their absurdity, sat in the front row for the Spring 1994 extravaganza, set apart and observing the madness. The symbolism of this placement was perfect, as Moschino had in part positioned himself as the industry’s conscience. “I have always thought that the world was too full of words and messages,” the designer said in 1986 interview withVogue.“That’s why I’ve often declared that I have never invented anything. Rather, I have remade, re-proposed, reinterpreted. I consider myself a commentator.”Sustainability and animal rights were among the issues that Moschino mouthed off about. His Spring lineup included dresses made of plastic bags (the empresses’ new clothes?) as well as a clear-plastic jacket ironically printed with the recycle symbol. Having stopped using leather and fur in his collections, in 1994 the designer introduced a “green” line called Ecouture. The finale was a vignette featuring models and their children dressed in white with red AIDS ribbons around their necks. Music fromJesus Christ Superstarplayed while white balloons fell from the ceiling.
It was at once an affirmation of life (a new generation) and an acknowledgement of death and disease. One might say that Moschino was a contrarian to the end—also, big-hearted: In 1993 the designer launched the Smile! campaign to raise money for children effected by AIDS.Moschino seemed to revel in excess and over-the-top presentations, but the case could be made that he was actually a kind of Robin Hood. “You must keep going; raise a lot of money for those people in the world who need it and don’t have it,” Moschino told creative director Rossella Jardini when he was in the hospital. The holes he poked into fashion’s armature were points of entry for “outsiders” into an industry that he saw as small and insular; magical and terrible. “If I were a wizard and I had a wand,” he once toldVogue,“I would wave the wand and bring all the garments of the world all together. Then I would call people and say, ‘Hi! Come on in!’”
3 May 2019
In anticipation of the upcoming Costume Institute exhibition,“Camp: Notes on Fashion,”we’ve digitized collections from which pieces were selected for the show or catalog. This collection was presented on October 10, 1990, in Milan.Franco Moschino’s joyous romp of a Spring 1991 show was chock-full of sight gags and disparate themes. “Too many designers do just one thing, one way. I like the big melting pot. The mess,” the designer said in a 1989 interview withVogue.What did Moschino throw into the pot for his collection? Well, Pat Cleveland sported a black-and-yellow jacket that was essentially an inflatable airplane flotation device with sleeves. Then there was a khaki military getup refashioned with pockets customized to hold a woman’s war paint—a compact, mascara, lipstick, etc.—rather than ammo. And no Moschino show would be complete without a riff on a Chanel-like cardigan ensemble; this season it was rendered in Missoni-like knit.Elsewhere, the designer paid homage to his own country in various ways: a jacket with a postcard-from-Naples–style design on its back; cathedral-shaped appliqués; and a dress depicting “the boot” (that perhaps nodded to the cartographic art of Alighiero Boetti). Continuing the travel theme in a playful manner, and evoking the Tyrol, was a dirndl paired with a cow-embellished jacket. Not at all humorous to contemporary eyes are Moschino’s costume-y and stereotyping takes on the traditional kits of flamenco dancers and toreros.Moschino liked his theater in the round, as it were, and it was necessary to see looks front and back to fully get their message. In this collection, for example, there was a tailored red pantsuit embroidered, in gold, with the word “waist” at the waistline. The punch line was provided when the model turned around to reveal the rest of the legend: “of money.”Similarly pun-derful was a seemingly innocuous look, consisting of a button-down, check pants, and a suede belt that wasselectedfor the Costume Institute show. It’s a look Isaac Mizrahi cheered in a memorial to Moschino, who died in 1994 of complications from AIDS. “I thought he was an amazing designer, the newest thing in Italy since the fifteenth century,” Mizrahi toldVogue.“He was so funny, true to himself, and very crazy. But he was very new; everything he did was very new.
If there was one thing he designed that I would want, it was a big white shirt, a silly thing that had a big iron mark printed on the back as if someone had burned it—and it said, ‘Too much irony.’ Talk about reinventing the white shirt.”
29 April 2019
A giant black curtain lifted, and a familiar game-show tune started jingling. It was the do-do-di-do ofThe Price Is Right, television’s longest-running game show, the one in which contestants vie for cash and prizes by guessing the retail price of—cue the canned voice—“a bedroom set, a billiard table, a brand new washer and dryer, a neeewww car!”Jeremy Scott called it pure old-fashioned escapism. But the Moschino creative director never lets us off the hook quite that easily, does he? In fact, Scott staged a game show-fashion show once before. His Fall 2001 collection, the last he presented in Paris before moving to New York, covered familiar ground, all the way down to the grandfather clock, La-Z-Boy recliner, Hoover vacuum, and model presenters with bouffant wigs. “The professional term is teasing,” he said backstage. “They’re teasing the prizes.” Teddy Quinlivan gets special points for the way she sold that red Ferrari. Eat your heart out, Vanna White.The first three looks here were a callback to that 2001 collection, only this time around the dollar-bill prints had six zeros at the end. Unchecked consumerism? We’re all of us guilty, but this was no downer of a show. When the “TV dinner” kimono glided out—vegetable medley, mashed potatoes, and meat surprise—it was downright hilarious. There were sight gags aplenty: evening bags in the shape of an iron, a bottle of dish soap, and a cash register; a tube dress shout-out toPress Your Luck, a short-lived game show only Gen Xers will remember (guilty!); and crystal-embellished dresses modeled on the packaging of consumer goods that advertisers try to sell during commercial breaks, like breakfast cereal, soft drinks, and household cleaner.Scott’s message was as plain as that Cap’n Crunch logo: As tempting as it is—and, boy, does he hope he tempts us—shopping isn’t the solution; a good laugh is. “There’s always shit in everyone’s life,” he said. “A little levity, a little bit of fun—there’s nothing wrong with it. I am the king of camp.” Tonight he most definitely was.
21 February 2019
Jeremy Scott’s men’s Fall and women’s Pre-Fall collections for Moschino—strutted out this evening on a set at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios—were high camp and just as clever. “It’s Fellini,” said the designer backstage, regarding the late Italian filmmaker. “It’s all the things I love about him, come to light . . . . There are exaggerations, off-duty showgirls, Casanovas. It’s surreal, it’s otherworldly.” Scott has long been committed to pomp. But analyze his work a bit further, and it’s the circumstance that really rings. His Fellini-inspired Roman parade felt, somehow, apropos of the greater moment—of a world where fools hold power, and hyperbole and excess are the new normal.Scott called out characters fromSatyricon,La Dolce Vita(which was filmed at Cinecittà),Roma(1972), and more. They came to life as women in herringbone tweed topcoats with starkly contrasting satin bows, tailored coatdresses with ancient font embroideries,flouin force, and chandelier earrings the size of actual chandeliers. For men, eccentricity was also front and center: trompe l’oeil sequined officer coats, a finely beaded lattice embroidery on a suit under a technical parka, and a spin on white-tie dressing—replete with a leather jacket and a tutu—all included. Pointing to a rose-red evening dress, Scott said, “That’s my baby Anita Ekberg” (Ekberg was the actress who famously waded into Rome’s Trevi Fountain inLa Dolce Vita). These nouveau Fellini sketches were embodied by everyone from Teddy Quinlivan to Denek Kania to Jon Kortajarena to Nadja Auermann.Not all of the fashion tonight was fresh-out-of-the-box original. But, when it comes to the intersection of style and pop cultures—be they fueled by the social media apps of now or the silver screens of Fellini’s era—few have as sound and confident a grasp in this business as Scott does. This show, with its high-piled wigs, little prince crowns, juxtaposed tones, and almost consciously falsified opulence further proved it through a chaotic, flighty sense of control. What he does is arch, but it’s both cinematically engaging and slyly smart (slash low-key biting). It does get you thinking . . . . What would Jeremy make if he went behind the camera?
8 January 2019
Jeremy Scott’s men’s Fall and women’s Pre-Fall collections for Moschino—strutted out this evening on a set at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios—were high camp and just as clever. “It’s Fellini,” said the designer backstage, regarding the late Italian filmmaker. “It’s all the things I love about him, come to light . . . . There are exaggerations, off-duty showgirls, Casanovas. It’s surreal, it’s otherworldly.” Scott has long been committed to pomp. But analyze his work a bit further, and it’s the circumstance that really rings. His Fellini-inspired Roman parade felt, somehow, apropos of the greater moment—of a world where fools hold power, and hyperbole and excess are the new normal.Scott called out characters fromSatyricon,La Dolce Vita(which was filmed at Cinecittà),Roma(1972), and more. They came to life as women in herringbone tweed topcoats with starkly contrasting satin bows, tailored coatdresses with ancient font embroideries,flouin force, and chandelier earrings the size of actual chandeliers. For men, eccentricity was also front and center: trompe l’oeil sequined officer coats, a finely beaded lattice embroidery on a suit under a technical parka, and a spin on white-tie dressing—replete with a leather jacket and a tutu—all included. Pointing to a rose-red evening dress, Scott said, “That’s my baby Anita Ekberg” (Ekberg was the actress who famously waded into Rome’s Trevi Fountain inLa Dolce Vita). These nouveau Fellini sketches were embodied by everyone from Teddy Quinlivan to Denek Kania to Jon Kortajarena to Nadja Auermann.Not all of the fashion tonight was fresh-out-of-the-box original. But, when it comes to the intersection of style and pop cultures—be they fueled by the social media apps of now or the silver screens of Fellini’s era—few have as sound and confident a grasp in this business as Scott does. This show, with its high-piled wigs, little prince crowns, juxtaposed tones, and almost consciously falsified opulence further proved it through a chaotic, flighty sense of control. What he does is arch, but it’s both cinematically engaging and slyly smart (slash low-key biting). It does get you thinking . . . . What would Jeremy make if he went behind the camera?
8 January 2019
Have you ever had the dream where you’re on your way to work and you suddenly realize you’re stark raving naked? The fashion-designer version is getting a call from Gigi Hadid, warning you that you’re late for your own runway show. And. All. You. Have. Are. Sketches. Jeremy Scott’s entertaining Moschino show began with that phone call tonight. “Pull something together,” Gigi advised, to which Scott responded, “Okay, I’ll be right there.”In the dream sequence that followed, Scott was a designer of an old-school, Yves Saint Laurent–ish stripe. The runway backdrop re-created the re-creation of YSL’s studio, which occupies the second floor of the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris. The looks were of an ’80s vintage: couture tailleurs with grand waist-cinching bows; pouf-sleeved tops and pouf skirts; and saucy wrap dresses—all in white with dashed-off Magic Marker–type squiggles and dots suggesting color and pattern.Like all dreams, this one could be interpreted in more ways than one. Scott himself alluded to the industry’s relentless pace before the show, but he hardly seems to struggle with time-management issues. Even with his own line, Moschino, and an H&M collaboration on the horizon, he’s always easy with a sound bite and generally extremely affable. Instead, let’s call this collection an ode to the haute couturiers of old. Scott (like Marc Jacobs, who also referenced the ’80s greats this season) was a rabid fashion fan growing up, and these clothes definitely nodded backwards. Cleverly, as the show progressed, Scott countered the anachronistic formalness of the silhouettes with some of his own Moschino-isms, like sweat suits and jean jackets and pants featuring sketches of his logo necklaces—the kind of thing that will do gangbusters at H&M this November.The show’s climax was a series of high evening looks surreal in their aspect: There was a thimble hat, a pincushion chapeau, and a tape measure boa. The scissors gown might’ve been an allusion to Dior’s famous Ligne Ciseaux, and the needle dress was a riff on a Franco Moschino original. Three dresses came complete with a bolt of fabric—voila, adjustable trains. Whatever you do, don’t stop dreaming, Jeremy!
20 September 2018
Tonight in Los Angeles the Moschino circus came to town. “I see my role in fashion as bringing the fun,” said creative director Jeremy Scott, standing inside a big-top tent complete with cotton candy vendors, caged plush tigers, and models mingling with stilt walkers, balloon-animal artists, and plate-spinning clowns. “And what could be more fun than a circus?”The theme for Resort 2019, Scott’s largest show to date for Moschino, was razzle-dazzle, and there was no shortage of showmanship. The designer opened the carnival himself in a ringmaster-inspired tracksuit with gold braiding with his signature skeleton bone pattern, promising the crowd: “You will see death-defying acts of glamour! You will see beading and embroidery never before attempted in a setting like this.” Indeed, everyone from clown to lion tamer to trapeze artist was represented in this collection of striped Lurex knits; graphic harlequin leather biker jackets, pants, and skirts; jewel-tone lamé separates; and tuxedos and tails in multicolored, sequined zebra, tiger, and leopard prints. Asymmetrical body-con dresses felt reminiscent of the strong-man unitard, while any magician would have been spoiled for choice with the tulle, ostrich-feather, and silk capes.Clowns have been a recurring theme for Scott over the years—he did hippie clowns in 2012 and psychedelic ones in 2015. For Resort, looks were accessorized with clownishly oversize cravats, sunglasses, and whimsical parasols; “but take away the ties and the top hats and you see there are pieces here,” said the designer. As the crowd put down their popcorn to applaud the grand finale—an aerial acrobatics display by burlesque performer Violet Chachki—Scott added, “I was hoping to end the show being shot out of a cannon, but it was going to take eight months of training and I didn’t have the time.”
9 June 2018
Tonight in Los Angeles the Moschino circus came to town. “I see my role in fashion as bringing the fun,” said creative director Jeremy Scott, standing inside a big-top tent complete with cotton candy vendors, caged plush tigers, and models mingling with stilt walkers, balloon-animal artists, and plate-spinning clowns. “And what could be more fun than a circus?”The theme for Resort 2019, Scott’s largest show to date for Moschino, was razzle-dazzle, and there was no shortage of showmanship. The designer opened the carnival himself in a ringmaster-inspired tracksuit with gold braiding with his signature skeleton bone pattern, promising the crowd: “You will see death-defying acts of glamour! You will see beading and embroidery never before attempted in a setting like this.” Indeed, everyone from clown to lion tamer to trapeze artist was represented in this collection of striped Lurex knits; graphic harlequin leather biker jackets, pants, and skirts; jewel-tone lamé separates; and tuxedos and tails in multicolored, sequined zebra, tiger, and leopard prints. Asymmetrical body-con dresses felt reminiscent of the strong-man unitard, while any magician would have been spoiled for choice with the tulle, ostrich-feather, and silk capes.Clowns have been a recurring theme for Scott over the years—he did hippie clowns in 2012 and psychedelic ones in 2015. For Resort, looks were accessorized with clownishly oversize cravats, sunglasses, and whimsical parasols; “but take away the ties and the top hats and you see there are pieces here,” said the designer. As the crowd put down their popcorn to applaud the grand finale—an aerial acrobatics display by burlesque performer Violet Chachki—Scott added, “I was hoping to end the show being shot out of a cannon, but it was going to take eight months of training and I didn’t have the time.”
9 June 2018
Jeremy Scott is a conspiracy theorist—for the season, at least. His Fall starting point was a JFK conspiracy, the one conjecturing that President Kennedy told Marilyn Monroe aliens were real, that she was going to go to the press with the story, and that she was offed because of it—as was he just over a year later. The tale’s delightful ridiculousness (a Scott specialty) inspired a conspiracy theory of his own: that Jackie Kennedy was an alien herself, and responsible for both of their deaths. If you were wondering why a few of the models were painted extraterrestrial shades of orange, yellow, and aqua, now you know.When it comes right down to it, though, this Moschino show wasn’t as out there as all that sounds. The boldly hued skirtsuits and pillbox hats—Kaia Gerber played Natalie Portman playing Jackie—were actually rather conservative in their formal 1960s matchy-matchyness. In any case, they were a far cry from last season’s tiny tutus and fishnet tights. After dark, Scott’s idea was to splice retro va-va-voom ball gowns with sleek silver beading. You’ve heard the hypothetical question, “Are you a Jackie or are you a Marilyn?” These were both. The hits here were the printed pieces Scott made in collaboration with Ben Frost, an artist and a kindred spirit who draws illustrations on advertising images and packaging. Elevated eye candy—quite literally in the case of Skittles packaging that said “Freckles” instead—these will speak directly to Scott’s fans.The subtext was what made this show compelling. Scott is outspoken in his politics, and he’s strongly opposed to Donald Trump’s stance on illegal aliens. “I’m not anti-alien,” he said. “I don’t want to build a wall.” Scott’s all-inclusive, everyone’s-welcome-here sense of fun has won him a rabid fan base—both at home at his eponymous collection and abroad at Moschino. Our president would do well to learn a thing or two from him. Come to think of it, with a few tweaks, Melania could conceivably wear one of Scott’s monochrome First Lady–at–Area 51 looks. There’d be poetic justice in that.
21 February 2018
Jeremy Scott is certainly not the first designer to recast conventional gender assumptions, breaking down their binary constructs. But he might be the first—at least, in the high-fashion realm—to reassemble them as a conjoined dinner jacket. What he dubbed the “tandem tux” appeared as the final look of tonight’s Moschino show following a purposefully provocative lineup that spanned dominatrix to ladylike, demimonde to debonair—often as a single statement. The jacket tails twisted like a partial Möbius strip between a couple who were otherwise shirtless, although in such a way that breasts proved irrelevant. “In the end, aren’t we all joined?” Scott offered backstage in the midst of models lifting off their latex masks.To be sure, the emphasis on glossy black surfaces automatically gave a high degree of kink to this collection, yet that messaging was often expressed to avoid an X rating (and, presumably, to keep retailers from getting their knickers in a knot): a swatch of lacing defining the back waist of a tailored coat; the blurred faces referencing Carlo Mollino (the renowned architect-photographer enjoyed his fair share of eroticism); the lingerie over suiting and T-shirts that will forever be linked to Jean-Paul Gautier. Several looks—including a gown boasting a train shaped like an overgrown glove—could be viewed through the lens of #whywewearblack. Scott’s response: “People are in control of their sexuality and the way they want to look; you’re owning your own power.” By that token, a male model looked no less masculine in a frilly dressing gown or tiered tulle cape, just as the women rocked suspenders with their fuck-me boots. Filter out the fetish, though, and you’re left with a fair number of curb-appeal coats, some rather stunning evening options, and a black adaption of last year’s pink pussy hat.If you can believe, nearly 30 years have passed since Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” and Scott was quick to give credit: “It’s very much in line with what our great forefather Madonna laid out, if I might say so.” He said many other things, too, using newspaper-style fragments as a graphic pattern safety pinned onto various looks. Among the mix: naughty, trash, spank, lick, pain—in addition to tic, tac, toe. Compared to President Trump’s way with words, this was flirty repartee. Scott’s favorite, in case you’re wondering: sensational. He remains a master of double entendre.
13 January 2018
It was déjà vu all over again at Moschino tonight. Kaia Gerber opened the show in a leather biker jacket, hat, and boots not unlike the ones her mother, Cindy Crawford, wore in a famous Peter Lindbergh photo of the supermodel forVoguein 1991. Twenty-five years goes by like water under the Brooklyn Bridge, but fashion has changed in the interim. Kaia also sported a My Little Pony tee, the latest in a line of boundary-breaking high-low capsule collabs that have made Scott’s Moschino popular on a scale that the house founder Franco could only dream of.Biker ballerinas were Scott’s story on the runway: leather jackets, satin bustiers, tulle tutus, and fishnets in a couple dozen variations, with some DIY tees thrown into the mix. “Shirt happens,” one read. Indeed it does. This collection lacked the visual wit of some of the Moschino shows Scott has put on in Milan. Last season’s cardboard couture wasn’t just clever, it packed an activist’s punch about widespread waste in and out of the fashion industry and, bigger picture, about climate change. Scott is as politicized as ever, he says, but the way he sees his role nine months into the Trump era is as a bearer of light. “You know in the Depression era, when people went to see a double feature for a nickel and they would be transported from the fact they had no food, no job?” he said backstage. “I have to stay super positive, because I have to give that positivity to people.”He certainly didn’t fail to put smiles on people’s faces, especially with a surprise finale section of dresses that recast his models not as butch femmes and tough chicks, but as flowers. Anna Cleveland he-loves-me-he-loves-me-notted the pink tulip petals of her bodice up and down the runway and Kaia did her best FTD bouquet.
21 September 2017
What a difference four months makes. In February, when Jeremy Scott sent out a vaguely Vegas-themedFall/Winter 2017 collectionfor his eponymous brand, the clothes exuded a kind of desperate hedonism, born out of Scott’s post-election fury and fear. This evening, as Scott revealed his latest Moschino collections—likewise Vegas-inspired—there was a sense of optimism and plainspoken American can-do on the catwalk. How appropriate that the show coincided with the day that millions of Americans were glued to their screens, watchingJames Comey testifybefore the Senate Intelligence Committee: June 8, 2017, may well be remembered as the day America got its hopefulness back.Speaking before the show, Scott explained that he’d premised his collections on the idea of a road trip from L.A. to Las Vegas—two cities for dreamers, as he pointed out, with a lot of empty highway in between. Or not so empty, if you’re really looking. Had the exuberant guests at tonight’s Moschino show in Hollywood made a pilgrimage to the Vegas slots, en route they might have noticed small-town girls in prairie dresses and denim, striped Navajo blankets being sold by the side of the road, billboards featuring the Marlboro Man (R.I.P.), and leather-clad bikers filling up their tanks at rundown gas stations. Scott himself is a noticer, as well as a connoisseur of Americana, high and low; his re-imagining of the classic Route 66 road trip was wise in the way it absorbed the personae of rest stops and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it small towns into the fantasy glam of the Cities of Sin and Angels alike.Thus his cowboys and bikers were sexed-up and turnedout, their suits bedazzled and licked by hot-rod flames, their muscle-hugging trousers and biker jackets embellished with studs and snakeskin appliqué. His girls were pin-up manqués, in prairie dresses nakedly sheer, showgirl bustiers, and denim, genuine or patchwork-printed, hanging low on the hip or cut down to shorts so abbreviated they’d make Daisy Duke herself think twice before donning a pair. It was the best kind of Jeremy Scott hodge-podge, with just enough finesse—to wit, in the tailoring of the leather and suits—to elevate the camp. The collection was also enlivened by a handful of inspired ideas, notably the pin-up silhouette appliqués featured on numerous looks.
Scott is the rare designer capable of being sexual in a non-prurient way—this collection, baldly sexy as it was in both its men’s and women’s output, cast sex in the same light as a night at the craps table, just another symptom of Americans’ undying belief that eventually, everyone gets lucky . . . and there’s no shame in hoping tonight’s your night. Scott’s embrace of America’s cheese and sleaze, alongside its apple-pie iconography, came off as both patriotic and frank. In whole, it was a rootin’, tootin’ rejoinder to those among us who think the United States isn’t already great.
9 June 2017
What a difference four months makes. In February, when Jeremy Scott sent out a vaguely Vegas-themedFall/Winter 2017 collectionfor his eponymous brand, the clothes exuded a kind of desperate hedonism, born out of Scott’s post-election fury and fear. This evening, as Scott revealed his latest Moschino collections—likewise Vegas-inspired—there was a sense of optimism and plainspoken American can-do on the catwalk. How appropriate that the show coincided with the day that millions of Americans were glued to their screens, watchingJames Comey testifybefore the Senate Intelligence Committee: June 8, 2017, may well be remembered as the day America got its hopefulness back.Speaking before the show, Scott explained that he’d premised his collections on the idea of a road trip from L.A. to Las Vegas—two cities for dreamers, as he pointed out, with a lot of empty highway in between. Or not so empty, if you’re really looking. Had the exuberant guests at tonight’s Moschino show in Hollywood made a pilgrimage to the Vegas slots, en route they might have noticed small-town girls in prairie dresses and denim, striped Navajo blankets being sold by the side of the road, billboards featuring the Marlboro Man (R.I.P.), and leather-clad bikers filling up their tanks at rundown gas stations. Scott himself is a noticer, as well as a connoisseur of Americana, high and low; his re-imagining of the classic Route 66 road trip was wise in the way it absorbed the personae of rest stops and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it small towns into the fantasy glam of the Cities of Sin and Angels alike.Thus his cowboys and bikers were sexed-up and turnedout, their suits bedazzled and licked by hot-rod flames, their muscle-hugging trousers and biker jackets embellished with studs and snakeskin appliqué. His girls were pin-up manqués, in prairie dresses nakedly sheer, showgirl bustiers, and denim, genuine or patchwork-printed, hanging low on the hip or cut down to shorts so abbreviated they’d make Daisy Duke herself think twice before donning a pair. It was the best kind of Jeremy Scott hodge-podge, with just enough finesse—to wit, in the tailoring of the leather and suits—to elevate the camp. The collection was also enlivened by a handful of inspired ideas, notably the pin-up silhouette appliqués featured on numerous looks.
Scott is the rare designer capable of being sexual in a non-prurient way—this collection, baldly sexy as it was in both its men’s and women’s output, cast sex in the same light as a night at the craps table, just another symptom of Americans’ undying belief that eventually, everyone gets lucky . . . and there’s no shame in hoping tonight’s your night. Scott’s embrace of America’s cheese and sleaze, alongside its apple-pie iconography, came off as both patriotic and frank. In whole, it was a rootin’, tootin’ rejoinder to those among us who think the United States isn’t already great.
9 June 2017
Our Amazon Prime memberships, FreshDirect deliveries, and late-night Net-a-Porter fixes produce a lot of waste. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 million tons of cardboard is discarded each year. Thinking on that (and knowing he’s as culpable as the rest of us asMoschinoCD) is what got Jeremy Scott started on the cardboard couture day looks he opened his new collection with: double-breasted pant and skirt suits, camel coats, and one very cool moleskin-like trench covered in brand logos,fragilelabels, and shipping tape. A cropped jacket with ado not crushwarning could come in handy at Milan Fashion Week, especially in the scrum outside the Moschino tent.Scott’s message for Fall was just as much about making do as it was about recycling. The show’s middle section featured collage prints of old Moschino editorials, “ripped from the pages ofVogue,” Scott said backstage. It was a clever, unobvious twist on the logo mania that has infiltrated the highest echelons of fashion. If you can’t buy the real thing, buy the magazine, and approximate the look yourself, he seemed to be saying. Can’t you just picture Scott as a Kansas City teenager, his bedroom walls plastered with tear sheets? And isn’t that relatability factor at least partly why the crowds surrounding Scott’s Milan shows are so well-stocked with non-jaded, non-industry types?Couture is an attitude, the front of his T-shirt read. The back:It’s not a price point.In act three we got ball gowns and party dresses made from household detritus: shower curtains, a rug, bubble wrap, dry-cleaning packaging, gloves à la Margiela, and rats à la . . . well, nobody but Scott would do a stuffed rat stole. Also: Stephen Jones’s inspired chapeaux of feather dusters, candelabras, Kleenex boxes, bike wheels, and a trash can lid that nodded at one of Scott’s earliest collections. He’s celebrating the 20th anniversary of his independent eponymous label later this year. Then as now his winning formula was: a little thought-provoking, a lot of fun.
23 February 2017
Backstage atMoschino’s combined Fall menswear and Pre-Fall womenswear show, Jeremy Scott was exasperated. Not because the collection was bad—it wasn’t—nor because of any in-the-moment snafus. No. He was, and will remain, mad as hell about our “global situation”—as he sees it, a Trump-tarred reality—and it was crystal clear in his temperament and on his runway. “My country is in the toilet. And when my country is in the toilet, the world is in the toilet,” he stated. “We have to fight for everything we believe in. That’s the expression I wanted to use.”Galvanized, this was a strong outing from Scott. Think: far less of the slapsticky and the camp, far more of the barbed, and prickling at times with oily black humor. It reminded this writer of an old Moschino ad from 1993. The promo depicted a quadrant of visuals, one of which was a fresco painting overlaid with the wordsNo to violence! Similar frescoes reappeared tonight in Milan, including on a fatigue suit and wartime rucksack worn by Jordan Barrett. Elsewhere, the imagery was covered with impassioned brush strokes, comparable in gist to redactions in declassified documents.That implied the end—or at least, the irreparable damage—of past convention. There were other nods to event horizon, like iridescent “countdown clock” motifs on blazers and overcoats for men, and full ballgown skirts for women. A graphic opening series of Transformers battling in space was also in the mix, though this bit—and another consisting of all-over studded bric-a-brac on lapels and berets, made with help from Judy Blame—were weak points in Scott’s phalanx. The best—and most piercing—pieces he showed tonight were the relatively simplest. See camouflage trousers worn with a multi-colored marabou coat. The look was suggestive, and slyly very muchdoask,dotell. Ditto an almost demure noir coat dress. Moschino in mourning? Flak jackets and cargo pants—some with those aforementioned paint swaths, some with a military green rose design—were also forceful.Regardless of one’s political affiliation, it was exciting to see a version of Scott shed of silliness (okay, excluding the Transformer figures). In a season already rife with strife, this, admittedly, didn’t cuttoodeep—how deep can Moschino go, really?—but it did reveal a fire to the designer not often seen. Light it up, Jeremy.
24 January 2017
Backstage atMoschino’s combined Fall menswear and Pre-Fall womenswear show, Jeremy Scott was exasperated. Not because the collection was bad—it wasn’t—nor because of any in-the-moment snafus. No. He was, and will remain, mad as hell about our “global situation”—as he sees it, a Trump-tarred reality—and it was crystal clear in his temperament and on his runway. “My country is in the toilet. And when my country is in the toilet, the world is in the toilet,” he stated. “We have to fight for everything we believe in. That’s the expression I wanted to use.”Galvanized, this was a strong outing from Scott. Think: far less of the slapsticky and the camp, far more of the barbed, and prickling at times with oily black humor. It reminded this writer of an old Moschino ad from 1993. The promo depicted a quadrant of visuals, one of which was a fresco painting overlaid with the wordsNo to violence! Similar frescoes reappeared tonight in Milan, including on a fatigue suit and wartime rucksack worn by Jordan Barrett. Elsewhere, the imagery was covered with impassioned brush strokes, comparable in gist to redactions in declassified documents.That implied the end—or at least, the irreparable damage—of past convention. There were other nods to event horizon, like iridescent “countdown clock” motifs on blazers and overcoats for men, and full ballgown skirts for women. A graphic opening series of Transformers battling in space was also in the mix, though this bit—and another consisting of all-over studded bric-a-brac on lapels and berets, made with help from Judy Blame—were weak points in Scott’s phalanx. The best—and most piercing—pieces he showed tonight were the relatively simplest. See camouflage trousers worn with a multi-colored marabou coat. The look was suggestive, and slyly very muchdoask,dotell. Ditto an almost demure noir coat dress. Moschino in mourning? Flak jackets and cargo pants—some with those aforementioned paint swaths, some with a military green rose design—were also forceful.Regardless of one’s political affiliation, it was exciting to see a version of Scott shed of silliness (okay, excluding the Transformer figures). In a season already rife with strife, this, admittedly, didn’t cuttoodeep—how deep can Moschino go, really?—but it did reveal a fire to the designer not often seen. Light it up, Jeremy.
14 January 2017
Playful riffs on consumer culture we expect fromJeremy ScottatMoschino. Thoughtful comments on our mobile phone-obsessed age not so much. After all, on every front row seat tonight was a gift bag with a Moschino-branded iPhone 6 cover. But a critique of our social media-mad world was at least partly what Scott was after with tonight’s collection of life-size paper doll clothes. Setting up for a Facebook Live video afterward (filmed on—what else?—a cellular phone), he said, “Before too long, this face-to-face conversation is going to feel awkward.” Meaning we’re getting awfully used to seeing the world in 2-D. Thinking about that fact gave Scott the concept for what turned out to be his cleverest Moschino show yet.Paper dolls, for those of you who grew up digital, are heavy stock paper figures with separate clothes also made out of paper. As Scott alluded to in his press notes, they predate Barbie, an early reference of his at Moschino, by 150 years, give or take. The trompe l’oeil technique he employed to render three-dimensional clothes flat also has a long history. The Italian label Roberta di Camerino was doing it back in the 1950s and ‘60s, and earlier this seasonThom Brownetook up the idea himself, transforming his quirky tailoring into flat zip-in-and-go dresses. By our reckoning, Scott might be the first designer to extend the metaphor and add the white folding tabs. We didn’t get a chance to ask if they’ll make it all the way onto the selling floor, but Moschino fans are so intense (there is no tougher door in Milan—gripe, gripe), it wouldn’t surprise us if they did. Ditto the kitschy bodysuits and evening dresses that produced the illusion of deep cleavage and/or six-pack abs.The in-jokes kept coming. Franco Moschino’s iconic teddy bear coat was transformed into a 2-D trim on an evening number, and Scott’s logo-belted black leather body-hugger was printed on a boxy oversize white T-shirt. Grand evening gowns gave him the most room to play, and it was remarkable how convincingly he was able to make their flat planes mimic voluptuous bows and ruffled trains. The irony? They’ve likely been clogging your phone’s Instagram feed all night long.
22 September 2016
Jeremy Scott’s joint Resort and men’s show in L.A. tonight was an ode to uber-groovy psychedelic glam, an over-the-top cultural mish-mash of ’60s references, and, in the end, pretty much exactly what we’ve come to expect from this marquee-driving master of kitsch. “I just wanted to make something fun,” Scott said backstage before the show, “something a little theatrical, something colorful, and upbeat, and bright, that my SoulCycle instructor, and neighbors, and the pop stars who I adore, who are also my neighbors, could come and see together.” Well, mission accomplished. The show, part of Made Los Angeles, mixed those ’60s beats (the decade when, Scott noted, Los Angeles really came into its own) and the designer’s personal, piled-on “more is more” aesthetic, all made of froth and prints and belly chains worn below expanses of smooth skin. Giant floral pool floats sat as a centerpiece, and it was all plopped smack in the middle of downtown Los Angeles at L.A. Live. An audience swollen with a specific breed of L.A. celebrity (typically pneumatic in their proportions, which sort of makes sense, considering Scott’s love of cartoon) watched big-ticket models like Miranda Kerr, Devon Aoki, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Chanel Iman strut out in bra tops and oversize mod pageboy caps, crocheted crop tops and flared Indian mirror-embroidered pants, patchwork and sequins and studded leathers, and swingy pantsuits printed with the same psychedelic daisies found on Scott’s tracksuit backstage. A joint WME/IMG venture, the show was open to the public, and tickets had been priced between $55 and $400 (though there were rumors of scalper involvement, so who knows the final cost for some). These had quickly been snapped up by the brand’s fans—and boy, does the brand have fans: Multiple generations turned out in Moschino or Scott’s eponymous line. “That’s a Jeremy baby carriage,” explained one PR rep backstage, as what must have been the littlest showgoer was perambulated through. (In Europe, the PR added, one version of the stroller comes complete with golden wings.) But back to the show. Slated, as it was, for the first day of L.A.
’s Pride weekend, male parade-goers and other fun loving fellows could certainly do worse than Scott’s brightly printed briefer-than-briefs (Speedos, really) and neon color-blocked moto jacket, his tie-dyed trousers and skinny kaleidoscope-like printed pants, or his slim-cut tangerine-color lace suiting, which turned up in a ladies’ cut near the end. Men’s sandals were futuristic, strappy, and possessing the requisite funk to rank their wearer among the best dressed at Burning Man—yellow pom-poms! woven iridescent straps!—while the embroidered brogues will find many happy buyers more suited to the concrete jungle. There were plastic leis and papier-mâché bangles, embroidered versions of the Moschino moto jacket bag, mirror sequined go-go boots, little crocheted purses that looked charmingly homespun, and a recurring motif of cartoon tigers, cobras, teddy bears, monkeys, and at least one heavily bejeweled pink elephant, a sort of rave-ready Ganesh, present to watch over Scott’s growing flock.
11 June 2016
Jeremy Scott’s joint Resort and men’s show in L.A. tonight was an ode to uber-groovy psychedelic glam, an over-the-top cultural mish-mash of ’60s references, and, in the end, pretty much exactly what we’ve come to expect from this marquee-driving master of kitsch. “I just wanted to make something fun,” Scott said backstage before the show, “something a little theatrical, something colorful, and upbeat, and bright, that my SoulCycle instructor, and neighbors, and the pop stars who I adore, who are also my neighbors, could come and see together.” Well, mission accomplished. The show, part of Made Los Angeles, mixed those ’60s beats (the decade when, Scott noted, Los Angeles really came into its own) and the designer’s personal, piled-on “more is more” aesthetic, all made of froth and prints and belly chains worn below expanses of smooth skin. Giant floral pool floats sat as a centerpiece, and it was all plopped smack in the middle of downtown Los Angeles at L.A. Live. An audience swollen with a specific breed of L.A. celebrity (typically pneumatic in their proportions, which sort of makes sense, considering Scott’s love of cartoon) watched big-ticket models like Miranda Kerr, Devon Aoki, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Chanel Iman strut out in bra tops and oversize mod pageboy caps, crocheted crop tops and flared Indian mirror-embroidered pants, patchwork and sequins and studded leathers, and swingy pantsuits printed with the same psychedelic daisies found on Scott’s tracksuit backstage. A joint WME/IMG venture, the show was open to the public, and tickets had been priced between $55 and $400 (though there were rumors of scalper involvement, so who knows the final cost for some). These had quickly been snapped up by the brand’s fans—and boy, does the brand have fans: Multiple generations turned out in Moschino or Scott’s eponymous line. “That’s a Jeremy baby carriage,” explained one PR rep backstage, as what must have been the littlest showgoer was perambulated through. (In Europe, the PR added, one version of the stroller comes complete with golden wings.) But back to the show. Slated, as it was, for the first day of L.A.
’s Pride weekend, male parade-goers and other fun loving fellows could certainly do worse than Scott’s brightly printed briefer-than-briefs (Speedos, really) and neon color-blocked moto jacket, his tie-dyed trousers and skinny kaleidoscope-like printed pants, or his slim-cut tangerine-color lace suiting, which turned up in a ladies’ cut near the end. Men’s sandals were futuristic, strappy, and possessing the requisite funk to rank their wearer among the best dressed at Burning Man—yellow pom-poms! woven iridescent straps!—while the embroidered brogues will find many happy buyers more suited to the concrete jungle. There were plastic leis and papier-mâché bangles, embroidered versions of the Moschino moto jacket bag, mirror sequined go-go boots, little crocheted purses that looked charmingly homespun, and a recurring motif of cartoon tigers, cobras, teddy bears, monkeys, and at least one heavily bejeweled pink elephant, a sort of rave-ready Ganesh, present to watch over Scott’s growing flock.
11 June 2016
A history lesson fromJeremy ScottatMoschino? It happened tonight. Backstage Scott was talking about “bonfires of the vanities,” in Italian, “il falò delle vanità,” but he wasn’t referring to the Brian De Palma film or even the Tom Wolfe book. Scott was riffing on the 15th-century Dominican monks who took on the Renaissance, leading a mob through the city of Florence, burning objects of beauty—art, books, furniture, and clothing. Of course, the Renaissance prevailed, but those monks left a trail of ruin along the way.It was a great setup, one that allowed Scott to go deep with the visual puns he loves. Some evening dresses looked charred with burn marks circling ragged cutouts; others literally smoked as the models made their way around the runway, thanks to portable smoke machines. A little shimmy of the hips or a shake of the ball skirt, and fogs of vapor appeared. Brilliant! “That’s a first,” Scott announced backstage. Special props for milliner Stephen Jones’s singed net veils and the cigarette holder chapeau with glowing crystal embers. Scott also lifted Marlboro’s iconic red-and-white packaging, swapping that brand name for Moschino, and switching up the familiar health warning, “smoking kills,” for a more pointed one, “fashion kills.”From there it wasn’t a stretch to think that the small-minded, fear-driven mob who, as the program notes put it, “declared war against virtues of self-expression,” were Scott’s persistent critics. And that the biker chicks in tank tops, taffeta, and rejiggered black leather jackets and caps with the word “warriors” scrawled across them were Scott’s girl gang, ready to take up arms with the designer and fight back. As one needlepoint purse put it: “Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.” Be warned, naysayers: They’re coming for you! By this logic—my logic, not Scott’s, by the way, he would fess up to no deeper meanings backstage—the bikers are the Renaissance chicks, and they prevail.
25 February 2016
“There’s artwork on every panel,” saidJeremy Scottafter hisMoschinoPre-Fall show, which was presented simultaneously with his men’s Fall collection in London. And it was true—while he’s always been a Pop provocateur, an embracer of Technicolor excess and nastiness, the clever specificity of these clothes lent verisimilitude to his sound-off: “It’s probably the collection where I spent the most time thinking about placement.” What that means: It read as a moredesigned(as opposed to merchandised) Scott-Moschino lineup, its ’90s club kid wasteland leaving, in its hangover, plenty to covet.As with the men’s, the runway opened with simple shapes—a Bowie-esque skinny suit (RIP), a faux-quilted bomber jacket, high-waisted jeans—but they were all treated with shock-bright paint, trompe l’oeil creases, and rivets enhancing the special effects. Scott called this his “shadow” series. When de-styled, one could see any of these pieces mixed in with tamer, offsetting separates. This section progressed to more layered silhouettes that were smattered, riotously, with motifs from the subversive British artists Gilbert & George. The duo let Scott appropriate imagery from their early work, such as the stained-glass-colored crosses used on an MA-1 jacket worn by Ruth Bell. (These also appeared on a go-go dress sported byJourdan Dunnat the finale.) Some bits, while retaining their directness in pattern, were “collaged”—“new hybrids,” as Scott called them. Tartan skirts with jersey insets and hoodies with silken panels and slogans that read “Power,” “Fear,” “Life” stood out. In conclusion: No one does cheap trick look-at-me like Scott, but it was encouraging to see an amplified creative acumen behind all the click bait.
11 January 2016
Jeremy Scott’sMoschinois polarizing, but undeniably entertaining. His brand of humor is Pop-ier, wackier, more sugary than Franco’s, but that’s not a negative: Scott is a designer who hits the bull’s eye of contemporary look-at-me preoccupations. Everything he shows can be Snapchatted or Instagrammed pretty much without hesitation. The collection he unveiled tonight, in a Mayfair church setting, was as vivid as ever, yet there was a shrewdness apparent, thanks to collaborative input from British agitprop artists Gilbert & George.“I wanted to do supersaturated clothes, so I had tea with them,” said Scott. “And as I was telling them my ideas for the collection, they said, ‘Why don't you take from our archive?’ So from the crosses to the heads to the slogans [which appeared fast and furious on virtually everything] there were so many wonderful things I was able to incorporate.” Evidently, G&G’s color-rich graphics had catalyzed yet another chromatic tsunami in Scott’s ever imaginative brain—his Fall collection was a rainbow in druggy, rave-y neon, right up to fluorescent-painted earlobes and coifs. (The chapel surroundings called to mind the Limelight, a ’90s Manhattan nightclub which was also located in a church, and some of whose denizens Scott dressed.) Denim had a spray-paint treatment, with folds and seams appliquéd on (think trompe l’oeil worn by nineties clubkids). Awesome Dr. Martens–style boots, cutouts of which functioned as the show invite, received the same graffiti. Collegiate stripes were also worked in early, either in scarf or shirt form, lending a grotesquely preppy element.In a way—and this is relative considering Scott’s outrageousness—there was also an elemental bloodline in the clothes. “A lot of the shapes are quite simple, and I did a lot of collaging,” he said. “Almost like garments put together—like a knit sweater with MA-1 sleeves.” Collage can also be attributed to Gilbert & George: Jourdan Dunn—who walked as part of Moschino’s women’s Pre-Fall, which was shown concurrently—wore a hooded aviator jacket with a knit panel inset down the back and slogan-stamped sleeves. (Elsewhere, one notable example of that wasSPUNK, which flanked the shins of jeans). Lucky Blue Smith opened and closed the show in Lisa Frank brights, but the silhouette and many other pieces were forthright: a suit up front, and a trench to round it out.
With Neneh Cherry, Noomi Rapace, Lucky, Jourdan, and even Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas on hand, Scott, typically, brought a bit of fame and flashbulbs to the otherwise lowish-profile London Collections: Men. And like it or not, that's a huge part of his package, a sort of superficial Pop curation, and extravagance for the sake of fun. As the finale stomped, Michel Gaubert’s remix of “Like A Prayer” by Madonna came thudding in—and at the line, “everyone must stand alone,” you couldn't help but grin. Scott is a lone wolf for sure, but his magnetism means he’ll always have a pack in tow.
10 January 2016
Nobody, but nobody is having more fun thanJeremy ScottatMoschino. Season by season, the ideas get zanier, but the productions just keep getting bigger. And why not, when his clothes and accessories are selling so well? True to silly form, tonight’s theme was car-wash couture. Traffic cones, barricades, and a genuine car wash that sprayed bubbles instead of water were installed on the runway. “No Parking, Couture Zone,” one sign read; another: “Dangerous Couture Ahead.”Also true to form, this was not a show about subtext. But if it was all out there on the waxed and polished surface, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t smart. Take the full-skirted trench coat with a warning sign on the back—“Open Trench,” it read—or the little black dress with the iconic red octagon on the chest printed “Shop,” not “Stop.” In a he-thinks-of-everything moment, Scott had none other thanLapo Elkann, international playboy and heir to the Fiat automobile fortune, in the front row.The accessories served up one visual pun after another. None other than Stephen Jones, milliner to fashion royals androyalroyals, did the veiled hard hats and traffic cone chapeaux. There were toolbox and lunch-box bags, tail-fin sunglasses, and caution-tape sandals. As for the clothes, they were the tony uptown answer to last season’s below-14th-Street streetwear.Chanel-style skirt suits came in flashy neons with flashier reflective-tape edging; others hadCristóbal Balenciaga–worthy volumes. Scott played fast and loose with Chanel-isms, most literally and perhaps dangerously with a print of interlocking C clamps. A pair of petticoated satin party dresses with taillights lifted off a ’57 Chevy looked like a subtler (if you can call it that) reference to Thierry Mugler’s iconic corset.An extended evening section that riffed on the rotating brushes of drive-through car washes was capped off by a long column dress with a neon sign slung over one shoulder. Scott’s got fans just crazy enough to take it for a spin IRL.
24 September 2015
Attention, all Gen Xers and old Gen Ys: On a scale of 1 to 10, how big an impression did the video for Falco's novelty single "Rock Me, Amadeus" make on you, as a kid? On the evidence of Jeremy Scott's latest Moschino menswear collection, Falco's club-kid take on the Baroque made a pretty strong impression on him. At any rate, it was virtually impossible not to look at the clothes on the Moschino runway in Florence this evening and not cue that music in your head.Moschino menswear was the marquee special guest at Pitti Uomo this season. And if you believe Scott, the Baroque-ness of this collection owed more to that locale and the atmospherics of its aristocratic patrimony than it did to, you know, Falco. The rich embroideries, ruffles, quilted materials, and metallic jacquards on the Moschino runway were culled from history's archive of decadence; even today, a pale-pink-and-gold wallpaper pattern brocade still signifies. The fabric summons, unbidden, visions of Versailles. Here, Scott used it in a tux.Some of Scott's looks in this collection came off—to be frank—a little clownish. The way to explore a more-is-more theme is with a sense of specificity and some circumspection. Scott seemed, in many instances, to be gilding the lily by piling excess on top of excess. To wit, the look that comprised a clever motorcycle jacket with zip-off tails in red and yellow wallpaper jacquard, a contrast cummerbund in the same jacquard, a magnified fleur-de-lis print polo, a bright cravat, and patchwork-patterned bike shorts. Ai! Scott's more measured looks had a bit more snap—although the measured-ness was relative, to be sure. A shirt and jeans in a crystal print, for instance, would hardly qualify as "minimal." Ditto an anorak printed in a Moschino logo repeat and embroidered with sprightly bouquets of flowers. The real commercial appeal of this collection, though, was to be found in its Formula 1-themed passages. Scott purloined the race car graphics and adapted them into tailoring jeans and sweats; you'd have to know more about Formula 1 racing culture than this reviewer does to see a connection between Ayrton Senna's aesthetics and those of Louis XIV, but anyway, there it was. And there, too, were a handful of women's looks, mainly bouffant jacquard or brocade dresses that Scott had scrawled with cartoonish graffiti in order to contemporize the looks.
This is the kind of thing Giles Deacon can do with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back, and in comparison, Scott's gloss felt a little pro forma. Current Moschino campaign star Katy Perry, seated in the front row, may have felt differently, though.
18 June 2015
Jeremy Scott is a one-man news-making machine these days. It was recently announced that Aeffe, the parent company of Moschino, is upping its investment in Scott's namesake brand. The designer is the subject of a feature-length documentary set to debut in September. His Moschino menswear collection will be the star of the show at Pitti Uomo next week, Katy Perry is the model in the new women's campaign, and the brand as a whole is getting a spiffy new flagship store in Soho. The boutique, in particular, seems to have been weighing the most heavily on Scott's mind of late, to judge by his latest Moschino womenswear collection. Perhaps "weigh" is the wrong turn of phrase: Scott evinced his typical frothy tongue-in-cheekness as he took on the motifs of the sales floor, everything from shopping bags and hang tags to credit cards and receipts. There's an argument to be made, considering Scott's instantly iconic "Sale!" tag dress, that he was commenting, this season, on the ways women commodify themselves, using branded clothes as a means to package their personal "product." You could likewise argue that Scott's spilled perfume prints had something to say about hyper-consumption. Best to leave those notions to the critical theorists, though, and focus on Scott's main train of thought here, which was a meta take on the spectacle of selling stuff. That much was obvious in the looks that riffed on the signifiers of modern commerce, but Scott also pursued the idea, more subtly, with his rather pretty prints of illustrations he made of the scene at his first Moschino fashion show, and in looks that remixed some of his signatures into blurs of chain, quilted leather, brightly colored tweed. There were also some relatively mundane looks, like a slender black dress with pink bows at the shoulder, or a shorts suit of pink-and-black tweed, that were straightforwardly meant to, you know,sell. This collection had commerce on the brain in more ways than one.
11 June 2015
It was just a year ago that Jeremy Scott sent his ode to Mickey D's down the runway at his Moschino debut. So much has happened since then: a new fragrance dubbed Moschino Toy and advertised as the "world's cutest perfume"; a just-opened L.A. flagship and a New York location on the way; Katy Perry flying over the 50 yard line at the Super Bowl in a star-spangled dazzler with a Moschino tag inside. Scott is nothing if not productive.Just eight days after he presented his eponymous collection in New York, he was back on the runway tonight with his best Moschino collection yet. Scott's loving tributes to pop-culture icons McDonald's and Barbie were honest-to-goodness social media phenomena, but it was time to try something else. His solution was to look at the street, a fairly popular fashion meme lately—see the success of HBA, VFiles, and even Kanye West x Adidas Originals—but this wasn't a case of me-too-ism. Scott's street is colorful, sexy, and altogether irrepressible. Next year's polar vortex will be a hell of a lot easier to take in his glossy sleeping-bag coats and vests.Though they'll probably sell like crazy, the show could've used less of the Looney Tunes sweaters and sports jerseys that came out next. Scott knows his fashion inside out, and we would've been happy to see more of the smart, subtle stuff: neon camouflage that could've been a shout-out to Stephen Sprouse circa his LV collaboration, or the tighty-whitey separates and tweaked and tailored denim that looked like a tip of the cap to Marky Mark-era Calvin Klein. With the street as his starting point, Scott made it a priority to study graffiti, and it showed in the terrific finale dresses. He got the details exactly right, all the way down to the "Hello, My Name Is" stickers that were slapped on some of the spray paint designs.For Tim Blanks' take on Moschino, watch this video.
26 February 2015
Deploying his customary irreverence plus a seasoned eye for a sequin, Jeremy Scott today grasped the nettle of conventionally butch midwinter menswear. "I think of it as a veryGQarchetype, and I wanted to take it on because it is something I have never played with," he said. "So, buffalo plaid—how do I do that?" Answer: repurpose this Maine staple for Mardi Gras with a garland of pastel metallic hibiscus. Such iconoclastic collisions and exaggerations—"I always overexaggerate"—were sprinkled liberally through a show Scott said he had imagined as a ramped-up Bruce Weber shoot.It models meandered through a forest of snow-flecked firs as more of the artificial white stuff fell from above. Knitwear and the shearling coat were torn apart and put together again, in rainbow mosaic for the sheepskin and patches of Lurex, cable-knit, jersey, and logos on the long johns, cardigans, and sweaters. A Scott-shot photo of ripped washed denim was digitally printed onto real denim as well as a down jacket. This marked the beginning of a section ideal for the overconfident, attention-seeking snowboarder in your life: because he can'teverwipe out if he's wearing a gold sequin Moschino snow jacket. Fake fur came printed with classics from the animal canon—zebra and leopard—or plain, as worn by a blanketed Adam and Eve. Fake-fur fanny packs and Moon Boots, some thigh-high, flashed with gold Moschino buckling. "I always try and push," Scott reasoned. "I think, What else is out there? And there is a ton that is missing from menswear that is still plausible but pushes the boundaries."Hence, there was little here for any Moschino-keen wallflower. A duffle coat—"I call it a Paddington Bear coat," Scott said—was oversize with patent shoulders in unmissable yellow. A multi-tartan kilt, extended at the back up the spine, offered a secondary function as a scarf. Overalls came in sheer organza peppered with more Hawaiian florals. The womenswear looks? Complementary: "They are in the snowy forest," Scott said, "but on their way to the rave."Scott, like Moschino, likes his jokes, and of all of them in today's routine the biggest were the hats and two shoulder-slung bags shaped like enormous gloves. The designer confirmed that the fingers offer no storage, "so that things don't get lost. I tried to be functional with my giant ski-glove bags." Function and humor—give that man a hand.
11 January 2015
One sure sign that what Jeremy Scott is doing at Moschino is registering: Style.com's comments section. Few collections have spawned as many responses (pro and con) as Scott's most recent Moschino outing. The Pre-Fall collection he showed by appointment in New York today, while significantly dialed back from last September's bubblegum pink Barbie bonanza, delivered on the irreverence and excess that have gotten people talking about him. See the fitted little black dress with the strategically placed hot iron burns; the gold sequined gown embroidered with the words "I had nothing to wear so I put on this expensive Moschino evening dress"; or a cocktail number with the classic 36-24-36 measurements printed across the bust, waist, and hips.In place of Mickey D's and Mattel's iconic toy, Scott was riffing here on the tools of the atelier. There was an oversize yellow measuring tape motif, prints based on fabric care symbols, another of a dry cleaning receipt, and still more that re-created the pattern paper used by seamstresses. Nothing subtle about any of it, which will suit the Miley Cyruses and Katy Perrys of the world just fine. But lurking on the racks were more understated pieces, like simple cashmere sweaters with pattern markings and sweatshirts quilted with a Moschino logo that will appeal to gals who don't live their lives on Instagram. With an L.A. store set to open on January 15 and the ink almost dry on a deal for a New York store, questions of commerce have got to be just as front of mind for Scott as stirring up controversy is. The surefire retail winners here: the fox- and mink-collared parkas.
5 January 2015
If you had any doubts that Jeremy Scott's Moschino is hot, tonight's show instantly killed them dead. It took a good 20 minutes to get past the throng at the door, the standing section was three rows deep, and the crowd whooped and hollered as the lights dimmed."Hiya, Barbie!" rang out from the loudspeakers, and delivering on the promise of the giant plastic comb that was included in the invitation, the first model emerged in a huge platinum blond wig, bubblegum pink lipstick, shrunken fuchsia leather jacket and miniskirt, and (what else?) mules. For Fall it was McDonald's and Budweiser; this season it was Mattel's iconic plastic toy that got Scott's low-high treatment."Like every girl and gay boy, I loved Barbie," Scott said backstage afterward, sporting a "Moschino for Ages 5 and Over" T-shirt. "It's hard not to; she's practically perfect," he went on. "She's a good big sister, she's had every job in the world, worn every outfit. And it's just joyful. Her and I share the same things: We just want to bring joy to people."We could problematize Barbie and her preposterous measurements (if she were human, she'd clock in at 36 inches by 18 by 33). We could bring up the body-image debate that roils around her, hotter than ever 55 years after she was invented. But who wants to be the lone sourpuss when everyone else seems to be having such a good time?And this was a good time. See Charlotte Free, roller-skating to the very edge of the runway in "Moschino"-in-Barbie-bubble-letters logo bra, track shorts, and sweatband, then shimmying her way back. See the pool-floaty "Chanel" handbags. See the Spa Barbie French terry Perfecto and icon print maillot. Sure, there were holdouts in the crowd, and there were some industry bigwigs within Milan's city limits who skipped the show altogether. But they were far outnumbered by the Jeremy Scott fanboys and -girls waiting on tiptoe at the exits.Fashion hasn't seen anything like this in years—maybe since Franco Moschino himself was thumbing his nose at the fashion elite. You heard yourself complain, "But some of it looked sort of cheap…" Or, "Where does he go from here?" Then you thought, "There she is, the sourpuss again." And finally, "What's wrong with me? Loosen up, have some fun. Feel the joy."
18 September 2014
Ah, the eighties, when fashion was fun and cheeky! When no one batted a false eyelash over a ridiculously exaggerated shoulder or a crop top on a man. This was Franco Moschino's heyday, and his poke-a-finger-at-fashion aesthetics allowed people to simultaneously buy into fashion and show a certain disdain for the ludicrousness of it all—a style version of having your cake and eating it, too. This postmodern and paradoxical irony has not been able to flourish in the same way since, but recently there have been hints that the time is ripe for some fashion wit again, judging by the success of T-shirts, sweatshirts, and caps emblazoned with "Homiès," "Céline me alone," and "Ballinciaga." Enter Jeremy Scott, a man who has seemingly been waiting for this moment his whole life. "It feels culturally relevant," he said backstage, adding that when it comes to witty slogans, Moschino did them first. So in a way, this collection was a reassertion of authority. It started with a suit and ended with one. But in between there was a beach party—featuring an admirably diverse cast of sexy models in various states of undress.Scott surely had a ball with Moschino ideas, creating Chanel-like logos from interlocking smileys and "borrowing" the Hermès ribbon and using it for a square pattern on orange denim—the nerve! He even mocked the Moschino brand itself, letting peace signs morph into monograms and writing "Fauxschino" on hoodies and vests. And in the same vein as Andy Warhol's200 One Dollar Billspainting, Scott closed the show with a series of looks with gold embroidered dollar signs, spelling out that this wasluxury.It was a smart reference to the iconic "Expensive Jacket" jacket from 1990, but it also showed that what was once a critique of the fashion system is today just pure pop.Backstage, Scott talked about how he just wanted to do things that people want to wear, and added that all the models had asked to take the clothes home with them. In a world where models are critics, this might be construed as a rave review, but really it was more a testament to how much Scott's vision of Moschino is tuned in to young people's commercial sensibilities.
15 June 2014
Jeremy Scott isn't a deep thinker. Not about clothes, anyway—that's not his thing. As he explained in his profile in the most recent issue ofStyle.com/Printmagazine, hewantshis clothes to be superficial, to be fun, to pop. Because he plays with iconic elements, his clothes can open themselves up to layers of interpretation, but in many ways the instantaneous reaction to his work is more meaningful to Scott than a critical analysis of it. With that in mind, here are a few instant reactions to Scott's new collection for Moschino. 1) Jean jacket/jean skirt in pink bouclé: Cute! 2) Pink bouclé shortalls? Too cute. As in,actuallytoo cute. 3) Those Moschino logomania knits are going to sell like hotcakes. 4) Mesh? 5) All this magnified monogram-printed denim stuff reminds me of shopping at Hot Topic. 6) I wonder what it would be like to be the kind of woman who'd wear a gold leather strapless biker jacket-styled minidress. Interesting, probably. 7) I wonder what it would be like to walk around Wall Street in that dollar-sign suit. Mental note: Do that. 8) The silk Moschino badge print is pretty sophisticated-looking, in a kind of seventies YSL way. 9) Surrealist shirtdresses: Cute! 10) Ha ha, "Shirt Happens." You get to laugh about thatonce. 11) Bandannas. Huh. 12) I guess Coca-Cola is the new McDonald's. 13) Soda-can sequins? Well played, Jeremy Scott. Well played.
9 June 2014
It kind of panned out just the way you imagined it would. Jeremy Scott is fashion's most evolved connoisseur of junk culture, and, in his heyday, Franco Moschino loved nothing more than poking the bear of fashion orthodoxy with flagrant infusions of trash. So when Scott paraded his mutant hybrid of Ronald McDonald and Coco Chanel, and his Budweiser and Frito-Lay couture, all in the name of the late, great Franco, there was a friskily superficial compatibility. But—chalk it up to the gulf of time separating the two careers—there was in fact a difference in tone between Scott's revision of the Moschino legacy and Franco's original template. Today's Moschino presentation was a crowd-pleaser. Katy Perry and her friends in the front row were eating it up. Franco, on the other hand, was more satirical by nature and made a habit of biting the fashion hand that fed him.But that was then, this is now. Scott's embrace of consumer culture in the name of Moschino was bright, brash, and ingenious. McDonald's golden arches were reconfigured as the label's iconic heart design. Franco's wordplay was resurrected in "Fur Real" on the back of a pretend-mink coat (read it as a play onsurrealfor maxi-Moschino impact). Any single piece of Chanel iconography you could imagine was twisted every which way but barely legal. Way back when, Franco was sued by Chanel for his irreverence. How times have changed!If the show ran too long (the SpongeBob stuff erred toward thewaytoo obvious), that was a natural result of Scott's kid-in-a-candy-store overdrive. He just couldn't help his sugar rush with his "couture" finale. Lindsey Wixson, twirling in a gossamer cloud of food additives, provided giddy closure to Scott's supermarket sweep. What next?
19 February 2014
In retrospect, could the role of creative director of Moschino have gone to anyoneotherthan Jeremy Scott? Seeing the new Moschino collection, you couldn't help thinking that this was a head-hunting job done exceedingly well: Scott, after all, shares a subversive sense of humor with house founder Franco Moschino, who died in 1994, and as the clothes and accessories here proved, he has a feeling for the brand's particularly Italian angle on chic, too. Everything wasmoltosexy,moltoluxurious,moltofunny.Scott's idea to turn iconic ready-to-wear looks, like a Perfecto motorcycle jacket, into bags wasn't exactly subtle. The same went for his reversal of that strategy, which found him adapting familiar accessory elements, such as a gold handbag chain, for use in his clothes. But the designs that emerged had a lot of charm—they made you smile. His silk-satin tee, made to look like a giant garment tag, was a particularly sly treatment of this theme. There were other grin-worthy efforts, too, like the trenchcoat with a negligee sewn on top, and the stilettos seamed like baseballs, stamped "MOSCHINO Official Major League" on the heel. That was an understated instance of the line's logo-mania; Scott, a former Moschino intern, took obvious glee in splashing the house signatures, and its logo, everywhere he could. Judging by this collection, it's a logo due to become very, very relevant again.
7 January 2014
The Moschino invitation arrived with a T-shirt emblazoned with the legend FOR FASHION VICTIMS ONLY. Years ago, Franco Moschino himself printed the same message on a straitjacket he showed in one of his collections for men. And, starting with the baby photos in the video that preceded the actual show, "years ago" was on people's minds tonight with the thirtieth anniversary of the label that still bears Moschino's name nearly two decades after his death. Alberta Ferretti helped Moschino set up his business in the first place, and from her front-row perch, she insisted, "I want to say thank you to Franco a thousand times." Catwalk legends Pat Cleveland, Violetta, Amalia, and Gisele (the original, pre-Bündchen one) modeled iconic pieces from the archives. And Gloria Gaynor showed up to croak Franco's favorite song, "I Am What I Am."That T-shirt sentiment pretty much summed up Franco's contentious relationship with the fashion industry. Keeper of the flame Rossella Jardini has done a remarkable job of carrying on his legacy while smoothing off her mentor's ironic, abrasive edges. Bill Shapiro, Jardini's lieutenant for twenty years, defined the label ethos before the anniversary presentation tonight: "Let's move forward." If the body of the show offered a good/bad duality—two outfits for the price of one catwalk moment—it was kind of kitten cartoony. Brassy belts broadcast GOOD GIRL or BAD GIRL so you knew exactly where you were at any given moment. Franco's claws would have been more lacerating.Nevertheless, what was on offer was a pretty effective edit of the label's ongoing strengths. Clothes for every occasion—with enough of a twist to make them seem like "fashion" and not some generic interp of the same. Still, the highlights were those archive pieces that ring now with a quite surreal strength: Erin O'Connor wore a jacket with golden spoons for buttons. Princess Caroline of Monaco had that jacket. As Lou Reed spat so memorably, "Those were different times." And Alek Wek modeled the iconic sequined question-mark sheath. Franco's question was this: What is fashion? Decades later, are we any closer to knowing?
20 September 2013
The year 2013 marks the 30th anniversary of Moschino. The weight of history is strong behind the brand, but so is the need to keep refreshing, so Rossella Jardini and her band took their show to Shanghai, opting out of Milan fashion week. "We looked back, but it's important to look forward as well," said Bill Shapiro, Jardini's menswear lieutenant.The show included the new collection as well as a selection of looks from the Moschino archive, worn by a cast of entirely Asian models. If the land-grab aspirations of such a move are fairly blatant, well, subtlety has never been Moschino's strong suit. It's hardly news that Asia is an important market for fashion—it may quickly becometheimportant market. And the fearlessness many Asian customers bring to their own styling, especially where menswear is concerned, make it a natural fit for Moschino's antic wackiness. "They're more courageous," said Jardini.The collection paid homage—in some cases, maybe too much homage—to the works of its namesake. Shapiro and Jardini created patchworks of old Moschino prints, which were eye straining even for those accustomed to the Moschino glare; Franco himself had once done cloud prints, so his inheritors took it a step further to turn clouds into storm. They were on surer footing where the influence was more measured, as in the survival jackets, similar to those the brand once produced but now fitted for iPhone accessories as well. Its teddy-bear iPhone cases could be mega-hits. Who could be stormy about such a possibility as that?The show closed with an eveningwear section of silk-tie jacquards in red, the Chinese color of luck. The label, already three stores strong in Shanghai, will have 42 across China by the end of 2014. So fortune may still favor the brave, even if this collection wasn't Moschino at its strongest.
23 June 2013
Moschino is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and kicked off the festivities with an extravaganza in Shanghai that included a runway showcase of the new Resort collection. It was a moment for the Italian label to focus on future expansion into the crucial Asian market, as well as a time to reflect upon the house's history. The new lineup captured the significance of both.Creative director Rossella Jardini used the opportunity to reiterate and update some of Moschino's greatest hits, like ladylike bouclé jackets, a nautical knit jumpsuit, vibrant floral frocks, and embellished topcoats—all of which were loaded up with familiar pearl embellishments, ruffles, and trompe l'oeil details. A boatneck sweatshirt and a fit-and-flare, color-blocked dress were updated in sporty neoprene, a first for the brand that felt fresh and modern, while a series of pretty foiled jacquard looks gave off a nouveau-chinoiserie vibe that should persuade customers loyal and new.
12 June 2013
There's often the feeling with a Moschino show that it crystallizes what's in the air in Milan, and it does so with the sarcastic wit and verve that characterized the work of the label's founder, Franco himself. So what happened today? The collection's inspiration was the socialite, equestrian, champion skier, and all-around fabulous creature Ann Bonfoey Taylor, a prodigious twentieth-century style icon to the cognoscenti, but hardly a name that gets muchzis boom bahgoing with the hoi polloi. Minus familiarity with Taylor, what we saw was a totally peculiar Highland fling, with incongruous injections of Annie Oakley and Japanese school uniforms. Incongruity is something of a Moschino signature, but there was no trace of irony in today's juxtapositions. In fact, there was a cumulative sense of the ghastly in the gold-insignia-ed tartans. By the time the classic monochrome Moschino made its appearance, the head was spinning withwhat thuh?. It all felt like the humanist fluidity of the classic Moschino proposition had calcified into rigid formality.
21 February 2013
Moschino reports that the Costume Institute has come calling for archive pieces for the museum's upcomingPunk: Chaos to Coutureexhibition. Unlike many other brands, who are using the show as an excuse to trot out the tartans, Rossella Jardini and co. opted not to explore that part of the house's heritage for pre-fall. Moschino is about to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary; there's a lot of history to dig into. This season, it was the tonier things that interested the design team: pearl and crystal embroideries trimming the edges of skirtsuits and tunic top-capri pants sets, polka dots, pussy bows, and point d'esprit. Not a safety pin in sight. Coats, in particular, looked sharp. For day, a cocoon-shaped camel number had shopper appeal. And for after dark, the tuxedo coatdress would be a versatile choice.
14 January 2013
Moschino held its Fall show in a local restaurant, Giannino, that boasts it's been arounddal 1899. There was a sweet homecoming dimension to the choice, since Franco Moschino held his first men's show at Giannino (albeit the old location, hard by the company offices). But the choice wasn't simply nostalgic. "This season it was important for us to give options for clients," explained Bill Shapiro, Moschino's current menswear designer. "The idea of doing a show in a restaurant—we liked the idea that there's a menu to choose from. People like Moschino for different things." He himself wears the more traditional, tailored clothes; diehards go for the novelty prints.The stated theme was tartan, a material similarly flexible: It's as comfortable going trad as punk. (And given that the Met is toasting punk this spring, expect to see a lot more of it in the months to come.) Yet despite a few showpiece items, like safety-pin-snared dinner jackets and waistcoats, the show as a whole struck a more muted note than many that have come before. Moschino is on the hunt for bigger business, and some of its stores are requesting more "probable" clothes. The plaid suits, coats, pants, and parkas on display here were perfectly nice, but seemed lost with the odder shows of seasons past. (A series screen-printed with the Tokyo skyline didn't gel.) Expanded menu or not, this collection felt neither fish nor fowl.
13 January 2013
"Let's just have a good time; we got it comin'." In these days of dire downturn, you can imagine Italians clinging to the sentiments of that song from the soundtrack of today's Moschino show. Rossella Jardini joined her Milanese peers in patriotically taking up the cudgels for optimism with a collection that was as upbeat and energetic as a youthquake's shake, rattle, and roll. She actually referenced the original 1960s watershed in her new designs, courtesy of the inspiration she took from the cult classicTwo for the Road, in which Audrey Hepburn's wardrobe borrowed from Mary Quant, Paco Rabanne, and Ken Scott. Jardini said she liked the slightly shrunken, doll-like proportions of Hepburn's clothes, and she certainly duplicated them in the neat, short little dresses that dominated today's show. And there, as well, were Quant's daisies, and Rabanne's metal-disc-covered shift, and Scott's florals precisely duplicated in sequined appliqués. Oh, what a wonderful magpie fashion is.Still, Jardini's collection definitely had an optimistic kick. And why shouldn't the label be feeling good when It popstrels such as Gaga, Kylie, Adele, Beyoncé, and Lana Del Rey have been papped in Moschino recently? There was, however, a fly-in-the-ointment whiff of the brand's primogenitor, Franco Moschino himself, in hair and makeup that evoked Ginger Rothstein, Sharon Stone's doomed character inCasino. That's the third time Ginger has been referenced this season. She has now officially trended.
20 September 2012
"Supermarket, super Moschino," was the pronouncement of Moschino's Bill Shapiro. The audience was assembled in a Milanese supermarket, among the fruit, vegetables, meat, and fish. He and label matriarch Rossella Jardini were paying homage, he said, to "the graphic power of the supermarket." He rattled off a few fifties-style ad promises you might find on the shelf: Money-back guarantee! Your whites will never be whiter!Foodstuffs and packaging are pop icons, and Moschino reused them to its own effect: The Budweiser logo became an all-over print touting the label. Detergent boxes became polo shirts. A second story—tangentially related at best, but so it goes—took summer lightness to new heights by making tailored pieces and lounge pants in shirting cotton. (Your lights will never be lighter!) It all ended with a wildly colored bang.The whole added up to a giggly ride. Behind the models, looking on from the refrigerated case, lay a giant swordfish on ice, his mouth turned up into a wide grin. Even he was having fun. And he's dead!
24 June 2012
Moschino has entered the packed sporty-couture arena with its new Resort lineup. Judging by the stamina this trend has shown over the past year, we'd say it isn't too late to join the race. Rossella Jardini came across a high-tech mesh intended for the bucket seats in race cars and whipped the house's signature little jackets up with the pro-grade stuff. (We wouldn't be surprised to see designers using NASA space suit material soon.) The stretchy trench and cropped zip cape, in particular, complemented electric poppy floral prints found on silk shift dresses and a long crepe de chine jumpsuit. Jardini also riffed on her folksy Fall collection here. She was ahead of the curve on peasant dressing—it's really taken off this Resort season—so the costumelike black skirts and frocks trimmed with white ruffles and whipstitching felt particularly relevant.
12 June 2012
Rossella Jardini has opted out of Milan's somber trend. That should hardly surprise anyone; this is Moschino we're talking about. "We're throwing a parade," she announced backstage. "We want a good time." With marching drums on the soundtrack, she sent out a lively, leggy, and young-looking collection. Skirts were cheerleader-short over platform ankle boots, and dresses came drop-waisted like those of a little girl. There were even giant bows in the models' hair, holding their French twists in place. And colors were straight out of a Crayola box: red, sunshine yellow, and cobalt blue, in addition to plenty of black and white.A parade takes all types, so Jardini threw in sport elements in the form of color-blocked ski pants and complementary ski sweaters and added edginess via quilted black leather pieces. Naturally, given the show's starting point, there were some bandleader jackets as well. It sounds pell-mell, but it held together. She even managed to get a laugh or two out of the crowd with a helmet made from black ostrich feathers. At a 9 a.m. show, yes, a few giggles counts as a good time.
23 February 2012
Rossella Jardini threw it back for pre-fall with two street-chic prints from the Moschino archives: a brick wall pattern and a spray-painted graffiti one that also popped up at the house's menswear show. Both gave the collection an urban grit. Vintage prints and gold-plated jewelry had a rock 'n' roll edge, but it was the statement fur coats and versatile suiting separates like a sharp tweed DB blazer that stood out. For evening, an embellished black gown with a high sheer inset (styled with a feathered headpiece and cat-eye frames) should appeal to hipsters and glam grownups alike.
19 January 2012
Rossella Jardini and Moschino menswear designer Bill Shapiro called their new collection Savile Rock. "We liked the idea of perfecting our tailoring," Shapiro explained backstage before the show. Hence the Savile, as in Row. There were suits on display as classic and office-ready as any Moschino's shown in recent seasons. Wait for thebut. "At a certain point, we got bored," Shapiro admitted. Cue the Rock, as in Roll.There were literal twists on the musical theme in the kind of novelty items Moschino sells so well, like the jackets with guitar heads embroidered on the back. (In front, they're covered in large basting stitches, like the untailored jackets). Rock and Row resulted in some memorable mash-ups, like a distressed-leather Perfecto jacket inset with suiting-wool panels. By the end, the looks had gone full-on fluoro.Between the tailoring and the usual Moschino antics, there was plenty here that was winning. And the show's always a laugh, like the pieces early in the lineup in a brick-wall motif. They made for a kind of sartorial equivalent of Chekhov's gun. By the end, they had reappeared in altered form: graffiti-tagged.
15 January 2012
Spring's tribal trend has so far focused on Africa, but Rossella Jardini's compass points in the direction of the American Southwest by way of Spain. It's not unfamiliar territory for this brand. Way back when, the label's founder, Franco Moschino, designed a matador outfit that he called Bull Chic. This time around, Jardini gave her embroidered jackets the house's familiar tongue-in-cheek spin with tiny bells that jingled as the models walked down the runway. (A leather Perfecto appliquéd with the slogan "Make Up, Not War" also nodded toward Franco's signature irreverence.) While those jackets and the suede dresses with deep fringe may prove too costume-y for all but the most diehard Moschino fans, other pieces trod more lightly on Jardini's chosen themes. A pair of sexy L.B.D.'s densely embroidered in gold thread had a Latin vibe not unlike the matador looks, but without the musical accompaniment. And as for the collection's Navajo beading, it decorated the waistline or the bodice of otherwise simple, summery frocks.Sunshine yellow, one of the season's key hues, provided the show's bright pop of color. Jardini used it for a smocked top paired with a long, flower-strewn peasant skirt. A swirling heart pattern on a trio of dresses likewise accentuated the optimistic streak that made this latest Moschino outing as winning as it was.
22 September 2011
Some designers have been channeling English rock gods in Milan, but Moschino went straight to the Big Kahuna, America's own Elvis Presley. Prints are a house signature, and Rossella Jardini really wanted to push them for men for Spring. The King gave her design team the license they needed to explore that notion.From fifties Elvis came a rockabilly's cardigan emblazoned with playing card symbols, a recurring motif, as well as a double-breasted, gold-buttoned blazer with the sleeves and ribbed collar of a varsity jacket, a typical Moschino juxtaposition. A military jacket reflected Presley's brief stint in the army. HisBlue Hawaiiperiod yielded blue- or pink-on-brown hibiscus prints on jackets, shirts, and pants. Vegas Elvis was represented by, among other things, a cotton gabardine jacket covered in trompe l'oeil spotlights.Combining the squire of Graceland with Moschino's ever present exuberance might sound like a recipe for excess, but Jardini and co. mostly succeeded in keeping things light and playful. "It's one of the few times we've had to tone down an inspiration," joked menswear designer Bill Shapiro.
19 June 2011
Truman Capote's 1966 Black and White Ball—a.k.a. the party of the century—set the gears turning for Moschino's Resort collection. Designer Rossella Jardini shares Capote's love of a woman in frills (though it's hard to imagine Tru approving of her preferred hoop earrings). The time (the sixties) and the parameters (dress to impress, black and white if you like) loosely structured the collection. It included bubble skirts and bow-front bouclé jackets, cropped capri trousers, and a primary-colored take on a Prince of Wales print. Midcentury socials—Capote's arm candy—would've looked smart hitting the boutiques in Moschino's color-blocked coat or a matchy-matchy banded tank and skirt set. (Although, this being Moschino, even the proper cardigan jacket had buttons with googly eyes.) Ironically, there wasn't much for evening.
15 June 2011
Coco Rocha's stuffed chicken hat had the Twitterverse aflutter this morning, but the big news at Moschino, especially in view of last season's more-is-the-most show, was how relatively restrained the clothes on the runway looked. Rossella Jardini built her Fall collection on a straightforward idea: the masculine/feminine twist. That meant there were tailcoats and tuxedos and riding jackets, all faultlessly tailored, but with an unexpected detail or two. Precious touches—gold teddy bears and black velvet bows decorating a collar, revers in a rose print, a cummerbund in hot pink—tweaked standard notions of the male uniform. The navy man's standard-issue khaki pants, for example, were reimagined as billowy gold lamé palazzo pants. Accessories—captain's hats and the house's signature gold hoop earrings—extended the metaphor.Some outfits landed more on the feminine side of the equation. Anything in Lurex bouclé, say, or a sharp-looking pantsuit in a red jacquard. And here and there, Jardini dropped the concept completely, sending out a baby pink charmeuse siren gown or a sleeveless sheath draped from that silk rose print. All in all, this was a less wild and zany show experience, but it served to remind you that Moschino is a great resource for a suit.
24 February 2011
Ask a fan about the most iconic piece the house's late founder Franco Moschino ever designed, and it's likely they'll tell you about the teddy-bear coat circa 1988. It made a reappearance for pre-fall, albeit in a much tamer incarnation, as the removable collar on both a trim jacket with grosgrain edging and a slim day coat.For the most part, though, creative director Rossella Jardini dialed down the funny to focus on pretty, feminine pieces. Skirtsuits turned up in camel cashmere and floral silk jacquard, and a cocktail dress was cut in bubble-gum pink silk on top and beaded black silk crepe below the waist. Evening drama came in the form of a little black dress that turned to reveal a back laser-cut into strips and dotted with a trio of bows.
19 January 2011
Last year,Moschinodesigned the official team suit for Italy's Aironi rugby club. The job got Rosella Jardini and head designer Bill Shapiro thinking:mens sana in corpore sano—healthy mind, healthy body. Healthy wardrobe, too, evidently. At Milan's Arena Civica, the label staged a rugby match and a fashion show, the catwalk peopled by models and thick-thighed rugger players both.Sport and fashion have a somewhat uneasy relationship. For every Aitor Throup who melds the traditions with seamless innovation, there are plenty of missteps. Moschino's collection fell somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. There was an appeal to the tailored pieces accented with the athletic double stripe. They're not for everyone, but a happy enough compromise for those whose usual business suit is a track suit. There were funny little twists on expectation, like the rugby shirt reborn as a down jacket, or the blazer in tech jersey. And it wouldn't be Moschino without a few yuks—here, a footprint-covered tux, for the gala-goer trampled in the scrum.
16 January 2011
Anna Dello Russo,Vogue Nippon's eccentric editor at large and a true fashion maniac, walked into the Moschino show this morning in a black skirtsuit from the house's Fall collection dripping with gold hoops and jangling like a tambourine. It would take a maximalist more fearless than she is, though, to pull off some of the clothes Rosella Jardini put on the runway today. Red and blue polka dots, stripes, ten-gallon hats, turban scarves, fleur-de-lis doorknocker earrings, gold mirrored shades—it was all happening, often in a single outfit. The model who wore an off-the-shoulder bustier dress that flared at the hips before falling to a deep ruffle above the ankle looked like a Wild West saloon girl whose time machine got stuck in the 1980's.The show had less over-the-top moments, but the sharp tailoring wasn't without quirky, tongue-in-cheek details of its own. A navy double-breasted jacket came edged in gold fringe, an ivory blazer featured a felt boat instead of a pocket square, and in place of frogging closures, a cropped linen style was decorated with gold scissors. And what's a Moschino show without piles and piles of faux pearls? Irreverence has been the name of the game here since Franco Moschino founded the company nearly 30 years ago. But when practiced this exuberantly, the house signature can end up looking camp. If it's not believable on the runway, what about in real life?
23 September 2010
Pearls and polka dots. Rosella Jardini went to town with the motifs, edging a white bouclé jacket in the lustrous gems, printing them on a little day dress, and splashing spots all over everything from blouses and short shorts to a wide-legged jumpsuit. You don't go to Moschino for understated. Irreverence, yes. A black trench stitched with mother-of-pearl buttons into heart and peace-sign formations had that in spades. But this was a relatively tame collection for the label, for the most part short on the tongue-in-cheek touches Jardini usually relies upon, and longer on a more ladylike kind of elegance. Case in point: a positively sedate sage green rose-print coat with a deep ruffle at the hem.
22 June 2010
"What do people need from Moschino?" head designer Bill Shapiro asked himself. "Why, a good time." The house's Spring collection gave it to them three ways: Pop, Rock, and Classic. Pop, in the Warhol sense of the word, runs in the label's veins, so there were cartoon shirts, headphones silkscreened in a Warhol style, and a Lichtenstein BAM! The Rock range featured white shirts pierced with nipple rings and an AC/DC tee reconfigured to read "AB/CD." There was a guitar print, another of drums, and a mesh biker jacket that seemed like a sensible way to keep the rock faith while staying cool in the summer.The Classic group collected some of the label's long-running favorites: flag motifs, peace-sign graphics, navy tailoring. The colored piping on a gray jacket was a reminder that underlying the fun there's some accomplished work being done, like the trench in double-faced nylon or the jacket in a wool that felt like cotton-—the kind of trompe l'oeil effect that is quintessential Moschino.
20 June 2010
Black cowboy hat, dark shades, big gold hoop earrings, and a black strapless bustier dress with a voluptuous spill of ruffles for a skirt. From the first outfit you knew that Moschino's Rosella Jardini wasn't interested in pursuing the new subtlety that's been sweeping through fashion. Those earrings turned up as embroideries on a strapless dress and as the trim on a little Chanel-esque skirtsuit, not to mention as a print on a silk blouse. And that was just the beginning. There was also long leather fringe, huge grommets, gold sequins, leopard spots, and Elizabethan ruffs turned into miniskirts. As for the chapeaux and sunglasses, every model without exception wore them.Just what a simple black dress with slightly puffed shoulders was doing in Jardini's exuberant lineup wasn't clear, but it did offer a moment's pause before she sent out a caution-orange blazer cinched with a hot pink corset. To be fair, there were some charming looks here, including a leopard-print sleeveless shift layered over a black turtleneck and an easy tent dress with delicate lace insets, as well as a trench in putty and chocolate brown—a seemingly conservative piece, until you saw the cowboy fringe in the back. Those were all things you could imagine hanging in a store; it's just that on the runway they were overshadowed by much of the rest.
26 February 2010
When one of Moschino's iconic gold-letter logo belts was recently featured on the site of a prominent young fashion blogger, it sparked frenzied calls to the brand's Meatpacking District boutique. The belt is currently wait-listed, and designer Rossella Jardini is paying attention. Her fun and flashy pre-fall effort centered on reinterpretations of archival pieces. A pink tweed ladylike jacket featuring coin purse "pockets" was an update on a classic, while silk dresses featured a bold print taken from gold doorknocker-size hoop earrings that appeared in Franco Moschino's debut collection. Speaking of gold, it turned up everywhere: in the form of zipper trims on ruffled leather coats and as round buttons spelling out "Status Symbol" down the front of a cropped wool jacket. The all-out tribute to eighties optimism was infectious, and it's likely to resonate with customers—whether or not they're old enough to remember these looks in their original incarnations.
26 January 2010
Life is a bowl of cherries at Moschino, to judge by the collection Rossella Jardini sent out for Spring. First Lady Michelle Obama may have worn the label on several occasions, but there wasn't much FLOTUS material on today's runway. Reworking some of the familiar house tropes, Jardini's focus was playful, not presidential. The de rigueur trompe l'oeil and surreal touches were all there: White topstitching traced the lines of a classic trench on a simple black dress, while the sparkly straps of a cocktail number formed a peace sign on the model's back. And one cropped jacket came with miniature, well, jackets for pockets.The cherries came in during the second half of the show—on a baby doll, among other barely-there frocks. There were also scribbled sunflowers and prints of ceramic dishes. For the finale, they were all patchworked together onto party dresses that were encrusted with bibs of crystals and colorful stones, not to mention accessorized with bangles on both wrists, gold hoop earrings, and heart-shaped hats. It was predictably, almost relentlessly, upbeat. Seeing Jardini get in touch with her serious side would've been the welcome surprise.
25 September 2009
There was not a trompe l'oeil conceit in sight at Moschino for Resort. Instead, the focus was on solid, salable clothes. In addition to a slew of drape-y dresses and structured coats, there were lots of chic pants looks for urbanites. Many of the slacks had the slouch and ease of pajamas—perhaps here was the signature Moschino twist.
22 June 2009
Rosella Jardini's Fall show began simply enough with a navy collarless cocoon coat, its sleeves embroidered with rosettes. But what would a Moschino show be without the trademark tricks of the eye? Enter a pair of slim wool trousers overlaid in black organza cut in the shape of jodhpurs. A smart double-breasted wool coat, meanwhile, was topped by a sheer layer of fabric with the floppy consistency of a bathrobe. The veiling technique, Jardini's show notes argued, made for two looks in one—on the coat, for example, the organza is detachable. That might seem to suggest double value for the customer, but in reality the sight gag distracted from the otherwise classic clothes. More successful was a party dress with silver embroidery that on closer inspection cleverly revealed itself to be thousands of small safety pins lined up in neat, orderly rows. And when she sent out a series of dresses with red velvet flower appliqués caged in chiffon, Jardini was firmly in control of her signature whimsy.
27 February 2009
Pre-fall finds Moschino's Rosella Jardini working a subtle military theme. Much of the suiting (as well as a draped gray cocktail dress) was done in jersey, giving the pieces a nice soft hand. A collarless trompe l'oeil trenchcoat balanced the label's signature humor with a timely sense of wearability.
15 January 2009
The giant gowns that formed the backdrop at the Moschino show were an early clue that Rosella Jardini and her team were thinking big—at least in the literal sense. The next clue came when the first girl walked out in a black-and-white dress in an oversize harlequin print topped off with an enormous bow at the neck and, above that, a towering bouffant updo. Bows also decorated large top-handle leather bags, but they weren't the only detail blown up to exaggerated proportions. Ruffles and roses were in full effect, the former spilling down a cocktail number or arranged in tiers on a drop-waist frock, and the latter punctuating the waistline of a mint-green satin plunge-front jumpsuit or the back of a black-and-white floor-length dress. Hearts, a house signature, were a recurring motif as well—as rhinestone clasps on clutch bags or as an almost unrecognizable white graphic on a black shift dress (it was flipped upside down). But overall, there wasn't as much heart as usual in this overlong and somewhat repetitive collection, which is usually such a reliable source for wit and whimsy.
22 September 2008
What exactly were all those weird stuffed insects and animals filling the front-row real estate? Turns out it was Moschino's dig at the fashion luminaries who don't turn up for the house's shows. True, Moschino hasn't been top of the pops for a long while, but that isn't to say that Franco's spirit doesn't still hover over the collection, particularly in its combination of tailored precision and punk attitude. This lot was, in fact, called "Punk-nic"—think a gingham-napkined alfresco snack with zips and safety pins. Franco's iconography (donkeys, hearts, those safety pins, the surreal bits and pieces he'd attach to things) was precisely embroidered here on shirts, jackets, and waistcoats. There was a cardigan covered with the peace signs he used so often. But the predominant impression was left by a fabric called "candycord" (which is, I'm assured, the name for a combination of corduroy and seersucker that is popular for Spring 2009) that was used in pale blue and pink suits. They seemed terribly proper, scarcely troubled at all by the presence of a clear vinyl flasher mac or a kelly-green moment that will be an early celebration of St. Pat's Day 2009. Schizo? Part of the Moschino charm, averred the ladybug two seats down.
22 June 2008
Moschino came clean for Resort with a collection that focused on washes of vibrant color. There was little flash and even less of the typically cheeky prints. Instead, house classics like ladylike coats and pretty party dresses—including a head-turning mini-frock in lipstick red—featured drapes and pleats as their sole embellishments. Refreshingly straightforward, these clothes are a, ahem, solid investment in more ways than one.
18 June 2008
What to make of the truck with the Moschino logo emblazoned on its side parked on the runway, the one from which the models trundled out? Creative director Rosella Jardini claimed it was simply how she delivered the goods. This season, those included a navy dress jacket complete with a chest full of medals, pins, and sequined anchor patches, as well as olive-drab outerwear with "epaulets" made from piles of brass buttons at the shoulders. Those cheeky military references and the runway gambit aside, this show turned out to be light on the kitsch factor that's come to be associated with the brand.Instead, Jardini went sixties girly, from the models' curly mop tops right on down to their patent Mary Janes. She added gold sequined embroidery to ombré mohair minidresses, whipped Milan's de rigueur leopard print into trenches and short dresses with tiers of stiff ruffles, and discovered the many uses of black silk fringe. The latter turned up, among other places, on a three-button coat and on the pant legs of a V-neck jumpsuit. A lamb-fur coat with a standaway collar, a Victoriana dress with a high neck and bracelet sleeves, and a tucked-and-gathered black cocktail frock with a big bow at the waist were three good reasons Jardini should consider playing it straight more often.
18 February 2008
Ironic showiness is part of Moschino's DNA, inserted there by the label's late founder, so what better playground than Las Vegas to provide a context for its latest collection? From the invitation (a simulacrum of a croupier-worthy white waistcoat), to the backdrop (chairs piled high, just waiting for a wedding or a convention in a hotel banquet hall), to the dominant motif (a four-leaf clover), Moschino's fall show was waiting for luck to be a lady tonight. Accordingly, the clothes ran the gamut. The black-and-white Rat Pack vibe of glen plaid slacks and a jacquard shirt, with correspondents and a trilby pushed back on the model's head, were a twisted take on Sammy Davis, Jr. (though he might have preferred the suit trimmed with a candy stripe). An argyle sweater with tartan sleeves looked like golfwear for a gambling weekender, and a black silk suit came scattered with that four-leaf clover. A black sequined hoodie, meanwhile, suggested a platinum-selling rapper in town from L.A. for a prize fight, and a brown velvet waistcoat-and-pants combo (worn over a striped shirt) would look smart on a professional card counter. Bow ties and zappily two-toned patent shoes heightened the weird formality. This wasn't strictly Sin City as you now know it, more an imaginary-past-meets-imaginary-future take, but the collection was proof that there is always room for a cartoon in Milan's head-spinningly intense daily show schedule.
13 January 2008
The Moschino girls stepped through the parted skirts of a giant, plaster eighteenth-century ball gown to stalk the runway, but if you were looking for clues as to where the collection would go, the backdrop was hardly a helpful hint. This wouldn't be a rococo romp (although there were a fair amount of bows—plastic, naturally, in the house's signature kitsch style). Instead, the main references seemed to be an unlikely mélange of Chanelissime, surrealism, and a touch of the sportif.Starting things off was a silvery gray crochet-ribbon skirtsuit, accessorized with a major silver-link necklace. The chain motif reappeared as trim on boxy little Coco-esque jackets, some of which were wackily shown inside out with the familiar Moschino label decorating the nape of the neck. The surrealism came through in giant metal snaps on a red short-sleeve trapeze coat, and in clear plastic rain jackets punched out in eyelet patterns—definitely not waterproof. As for the sporty side of things, there were evening anoraks in taffeta and a healthy handful of rompers and onesies.What to make of it all? It's not entirely clear Rosella Jardini and team were thinking clearly themselves. But that doesn't mean the show didn't offer a few moments of meaningless fun.
24 September 2007
You can't put your arms around a memory, but Franco Moschino's torchbearers are doing their best. The late designer's iconoclastic inclinations have been logo-fied: Here, his once-ironic peace sign showed up as a zesty fluorescent orange detail on denim. In the spirit of the droll message T-shirts he pioneered, one model wore a top that read "Tall, dark and handsome" on the front, "Short, pale and ugly" on the back. A comment on the superficiality of fashion? Well, that would have been quite in keeping with Moschino's own bite-the-hand-that-feeds leanings, except that in this case, the kookiness was self-conscious. So were the bow ties, hardly ever a winning styling flourish in a fashion show (cf. the fluoro version that accessorized a sequin-trimmed tux). In fact, fluorescence was generally a little too omnipresent, lending the catwalk the feel of a hazmat extravaganza.It's possible Moschino himself could have twisted such an element into a comment on the dangerous times in which we live, in the same way that he might have done more with the starred T-shirts with striped sleeves, or striped shirts with embroidered stars (here, they were merely a reminder of how much genuine grist this particular moment might have offered to Moschino's satirical mill). A more simpatico bet was the Warholian flower prints, because in his own way, Franco was a pop artist, too.
24 June 2007
The massive gold peace sign at the back of the runway could've meant Moschino's audience was in for more of the military looks seen elsewhere this week, but that couldn't have been further from the case. Instead, designer Rosella Jardini focused on the innocence of the sixties, as exemplified by the bubble silhouettes that are still popping up all over Milan. The collection started all sweetness and light with a swingy brocade coat-dress. A gold laser-cut leather pinafore, a short navy taffeta shift with bunches of rosettes at the back, and a lamp-shade coat in red satin also kept the look young, as did the sporty black fabric used for such pieces as a one-shoulder dress.The collection was pretty enough, in other words, but somewhat tepid by house standards. Where was the signature wackiness? The only hint of the late Franco Moschino's madcap wit was in a couple of slogan T-shirts (in the style of Frankie Goes to Hollywood or House of Holland, depending on your generation) that read "MOSCHINO SAYS LOVE." A few more surprising gestures like that would've made the show more interesting.
21 February 2007
The Moschino show had all the trappings of late-fifties womanhood: the gloves, the bouffant hairdos, the crinolines under the skirts. And suspended at the back of the runway were giant spools of thread, skeins of yarn, and buttons aplenty. But the gals Rosella Jardini designs for aren't the type to sit alone at home on a Saturday night and darn socks. Whether on a hot date or solo, they're ready for the dance floor, here in a strapless black dress that blossomed out below the waist, or a shorter shift sprayed with crystals to catch the light. Tailored pieces, like trenches and curving boleros—along with leggings, some in gold Lurex—gave evening numbers a cool, rockabilly edge.If these clothes sometimes lack the finesse that you expect from a designer-priced collection, Jardini made up for it with plenty of the spirit the label's known for. She overstitched a white, swingy jacket with black embroidery; laced a rope belt through the oversize grommets of a sailor suit; and, less compellingly, put crocheted sleeves on a coat. She still loves a visual trick, too: A couple of short-sleeve blouses came with long sleeves tied at the chest, mimicking the arms of a sweater tossed smartly over the shoulders. There were floral prints, graphic bull's-eye dots, and plenty of the brand's signature red, including one special bag made from molded plastic in the shape of a heart that neatly summed up the collection's tough yet sweet, and hard-to-dislike, message.
25 September 2006
Honoring the late Franco Moschino's "classico con twist" mantra, the house's creative team continues to serve up serious, well-behaved classics that are always enlivened with a dash of humor. For spring, the Moschino girls stepped through life-size silhouette cutouts that formed the backdrop for their shenanigans in clothes that ransacked the decades. It seemed as though a ponytailed young girl had been let loose on her grandmother's lifetime horde of attic treasures—and had mixed them up with some of her own thrift storetrouvailles. She might shrug a shrunken black leather biker's jacket over an oyster satin thirties camisole, or wear her heart-shape Lolita sunglasses with a stiff little sixties A-line evening dress. And how to give a punky edge to those well-behaved chiffon and black lace cocktail frocks? How about clumpy patent platform shoes, licked with fluoro color?The collection's inventive trompe l'oeil effects included full-skirt fifties garden-party dresses, their hips swagged with prints of chain-link belts, or a writhing mass of pearl necklaces scattered with the real (faux) thing. And the Moschino team not only succumbed to the season's mania for ruffles (in tiers of Coco Chanel-like sequined black tulle, or a frill peeping from the hem of a rigid dress) —it also parodied it, in the form of a plain swing skirt painted with imagined flounces.
27 September 2005
When a model with a flyaway quiff and cat's-eye makeup steps onto the runway dressed in a black leather flared baby-doll bolero on top of a sparkly chiffon dress with a kick frill at the hem, what is one supposed to make of it? The late Franco Moschino was known for his sense of humor, but that couldn't explain what was behind one of the oddest conglomerates of clothing to hit the Milan runway for many a season.As the bizarre mixture of fetishy frilled leather skirts and kinky pinafores, mixed with puff-sleeve blouses and folksy felted coats with leaf appliqués proceeded, the mystery only deepened. A few tenuous connections to the inevitable Milan bubble skirt appeared along the way, but they weren't much help in anchoring this deranged show to anything current.
23 February 2005
Put Carmen Miranda through the Milanese fashion blender, and you might end up with a sweet-tasting fashion cocktail that looks something like Moschino for Spring 2005. Take a few puffed sleeves, exaggerated forties prints, and eyelet frilled petticoats, throw them in with vertiginous stripy platforms and lamp-shade hats, and voilà: The mood is set.The down-Mexico-way theme is, of course, merely this season's excuse for adding decorative froth to an essentially easy to wear, girly collection. (The show also took in the current feeling for handcraft, in the raw-edged appliqué on a flowery chiffon full-skirted coat, and the naïve animal embroideries applied to a flouncy, floor-length peasant skirt.)But when these runway ideas translate into retail reality, as pieces on a rack, they won't look like literal retro. Apply the Moschino spring spirit to blouses, or the edgings on a black trench, and the results look like sane propositions for a normal wardrobe. Still, even on the runway, all that forties stuff can strain credibility. Who's up for a pair of shorts with an outburst of lacy ruffles at the knee? We'd like to know.
29 September 2004
The jaunty little creature who pops up on Moschino's runway every season doesn't distress herself over the subtext of her clothes. No retro irony for her; she's more interested in the best opportunities to look cute. This season, of course, the young-lady-in-the-fifties look will suit her purposes to a T.From the little wired ribbon-and-velvet hair ornaments to the Betty Boop pumps, Moschino's young woman has that down pat. There was a matchy-matchy moment, played with a silver-threaded tweed suit with a fluffy white Peter Pan fur collar worn with a swinging bag in the same fabric. The show ran on at length, through Chanel-inspired tweeds, tiered skirts perked out with tulle petticoats, and any number of flirtatious printed afternoon dresses. For all its cheeriness, though, a heavy air of inevitability is beginning to hang over collections like this. Moschino will be heaving with sweet, no-brainer, period pieces for fall—like so many others who have taken an obvious cue from Miuccia Prada, but skipped the intellectual thought process that puts her leagues ahead.
26 February 2004
Schoolgirlish jokes are to Moschino what knits are to Missoni or psychedelic prints to Pucci: the core of its brand identity. This season the goofing around started with a rusty brown coat masquerading as a door—complete with panels, brass knocker, and house number—worn open over a bikini, with fluorescent over-the-knee stockings and satin wedges. From there the collection played a kind of sophomoric peekaboo with surrealism, referencing Dali (lip prints on silk dresses), Elsa Schiaparelli, and Christian Berard (pink georgette scarf-printed gowns).For those who still didn’t get it, cotton underwear graffiti’d with slogans like "too haute to handle" (bada-boom) signaled to the general theme of messing about with the icons of Parisian couture. Chanel-inspired jackets had fringes clanking with plastic beads in hard-candy colors; fifties–style strapless tulle evening gowns were encrusted with safety pins or enamel badges to mimic embroidery. Some of the gags were misjudged, like a reprise of punk (notthatold chestnut again!) and the use of far too much black to be funny. But there were plenty of pieces that toyed with summer’s trends in a way that won’t make Moschino shoppers feel they’re buying into a complete joke.
3 October 2003
To the strains of Madonna’s “Holiday” and “Like a Virgin,” a parade of Park Avenue punk princesses strolled down the Moschino runway, which was lit by a disco ball and a border of lightbulbs suggesting a diva’s dressing-room mirror.The raunchy Moschino gals, as imagined by creative director Rossella Jardini and designer Vincent Darré, looked like early-’80s wannabe-starlets—the kind once featured in Andy Warhol’sInterview,the kind who ransacked their mothers’ closets in search of vintage glamour. Luxe mink-trimmed and jet-beaded satin evening jackets and coats were accessorized with jewels that might have been scooped up at random from momma’s dressing table. These bourgeois props were mixed with short ’50s prom petticoats in nylon tulle (blowing their coat skirts to pneumatic proportions) and satin ski pants. Patent Courrèges-style go-go boots and Rubik’s Cube eyewear rounded out a look that was just right for storming Studio 54 or braving the Mudd Club.The ’80s-’60s clash is a strong trend this season, and the Moschino design team married it well to the house's spirit of jokey classics. Paco Rabanne–inspired dresses were made from large discs seemingly cut out of “Moschino” beer cans, while mohair tunic sweaters were belted in patent leather. (Lightbulb earrings, on the other hand, did not come across as the brightest idea on the block.) Born actresses Natasha Vojnovic and Rie Rasmussen led the Material Girls for the finale, vamping it up à la Janice Dickinson and Pat Cleveland.
2 March 2003
The late Franco Moschino was fashion’s greatest prankster, always playing the silliest tricks on his audience to jolt them out of their seriousness. So when the models at this house decided to open the show by walking the runway backward, it was a jape that took the audience back to the old days in a very welcome way. After the laughter, though, came a lot of scribbling in notebooks, because the clothes the girls were wearing happened to be some of the youngest, perkiest, most wearable in Milan this season.All of Italy’s major Spring fashion statements, from kimonos to prints to chiffons to layers, came down the Moschino runway. The bonus was that everything was handled with a great sense of color—pretty pastels, tiny flower prints mixed with polka dots—and without any vulgarity. Add in nippy styling ideas, like sheer apron dresses, sprinkled with sequins, to wrap over almost anything a girl owns, and the result is a design feat that merited all that happy applause.
29 September 2002
Like that bubbly blonde in the teen movies who manages to trump the smart alecks with one perfect aperçu, Moschino lightened up a somber fashion week with a breezy, pretty collection that left viewers smiling.Michele Hicks opened the show with a saucy strut, her sexily mussed hair spilling onto a cool black parka and wrap dress. Much of the collection was black, but without being goth-heavy or industrial-serious; instead, flowing fabrics and trim silhouettes kept it feminine and light. Moschino creative director Rossella Jardini acknowledged the house's history by slinging a few of those gold block-letter MOSCHINO belts around the hips on her tailored looks, and by courageously, if not always successfully, mixing bold prints. There were a few overly fussy bloopers, like a droopy safari-styled jumpsuit and a surfeit of miscast ruffles. But for the most part, Jardini—like that typecast blonde—was clearly having fun.
3 March 2002
Designer Vincent Dare, who until recently worked at Fendi, has taken over the reigns at Moschino, presenting one of the most spirited collections that label has seen in years.Humor has always been a key ingredient at Moschino, and Dare made the most of it. Iconic '80s Chanel diva Inès de la Fressange opened the show, wearing a whimsical reinterpretation of the signature Chanel bouclé suit. The T-shirt underneath, meanwhile, was printed with a haughty put-down from Karl Lagerfeld: "Moschino n'est pas un style, c'est un pastiche!" As a riposte, Dare then introduced some great ruffled skirts, lightly beaded caftans, and a great horizontal-pleat dress that had gold coins nestled within the folds. Other urban suggestions included sharp pantsuits with ribbon detailing, a paillette-trimmed trench, and a crumpled tux that looked like it had been pulled prematurely from the dryer.Playfully recalling Moschino's prominence in the '80s, Dare also sent ex-models Lynn Koester and Violeta Sanchez down the runway. They clearly enjoyed their comeback cameos.
1 October 2001
One can always count on Moschino for a good romp; playing up stereotypes with sarcastic humor is one of the label's signature touches. From the moment a sexy chambermaid stepped onto the catwalk bearing a bottle of wine and wearing an apron and a dress that said "Maid in Italy," it was clear that this was no ordinary show.A troupe of sleepy, fresh-out-of-bed housewives followed—wearing pajamalike satin camisole dresses, a pink fur bathroom robe, hair curlers and sleeping masks. Once dressed, our friends proved to be everything from gingham-clad cleaning ladies, to flower-drenched good girls, to on-the-go businesswomen. What followed was a play on fashion's current obsession with masculine and feminine roles: Girls dressed up as schoolboys, and gangsters and military cadets all turned up with their belles in tow.There were no major fashion revelations, but Moschino provided an hour of kitschy fun that offered relief from the overly serious and self-conscious mood that has dominated the week.
4 March 2001
Girls just wanted to have fun at Moschino's riotous festival of colors and prints. An assortment of references evoked everything from a psychedelic Peter Pan to a neo-dandy cabaret singer and a country-western drifter on Route 66. The runway was a no-holds-barred orgy of pirate caricature dresses, sailor pants, deluxe hippie dresses, ruffled shirts (worn with big-buckled buccaneer belts and extravagant headpieces), closely fitted waistcoats and acid-tinted snakeskin. Young sartorial divas should have no problem finding a broad selection of outfits here to drive Mother insane.
28 September 1999