Jeremy Scott (Q4813)
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Jeremy Scott is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Jeremy Scott |
Jeremy Scott is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Are you experiencing news fatigue? The ante keeps upping, and yet . . . the British Parliament evokes the start of theEnglish Civil War, live on BBC. Whatevs. President Trump makes a Sharpie extension of a hurricane’s radius as anentire island in the Bahamasis virtually washed away; there are memes. Shrug. Joe Biden’s eye begins to bleedduring a seven-hour CNN marathonon climate change: What else is on TV? No matter how apocalyptic, idiotic, or both, current events these days have the cumulative effect of making you want to book a seat on one of those SpaceX capsules, and shoot yourself straight into the stratosphere. Which seems—in a good way—to be the vibe Jeremy Scott was picking up on this season.This Scott outing was a delicious escapist treat. Scott admitted as much himself, speaking before the show: With this collection, he said, he was out to “have fun,” and with that agenda in mind, he concocted what he described as a “neon rock opera.” A bit heavy metal, a bit rockabilly, a lot New Wave—there was a strong whiff of ’80s cult classic filmLiquid Sky—and extremely kitschy sci-fi, Scott’s collection more or less dispensed with anything that might be humdrum about a garment and instead aimed to jam as much excitement into every item of clothing as humanly possible. There were zebra-stripe bouffant frocks in electric colors, psychedelic Hawaiian print menswear ensembles, color-spattered foil blazers and coats, metallic leather minidresses . . . The list goes on. Scott’s farthest flights of fancy were either his hallucinogenic pieces with silver tubes twisting around them like snakes or others concocted from patchworked panties—it just depends whether you prefer your fancy surreal or silly, take your pick.There was so much to look at here it was hard to parse. At a certain point, you stopped noting facts such as, say, that Scott was willy-nilly mashing up biker gear and Westernwear, and gave in to the endorphin rush he’d set out to induce. What didn’t escape notice, however, was the serious craftsmanship that went into these clothes, witnessed in everything from the curving trim on some of his eye-popping tailoring, to the chain-mail pieces that glittered like disco balls. Was this show unserious? Pointedly so. But escapism needn’t be read as a form of giving up: After all, when you’re staring down a dead end, escape is how you find your way out.
7 September 2019
This doesn’t fall into the category of a valid complaint, but it’s really a shame that tonight’sJeremy Scottshow didn’t open with the news anchor from Monty Python intoning, “And now for something completely different.” Because, though one may expect all sorts of surprising things from Jeremy Scott, it was impossible to prepare yourself for this collection’s shocking lack of color. With the exception of a few denim looks in faded blue, every item on Scott’s runway this time out was black-and-white. Newsprint black-and-white, to be specific.Scott took direct aim at his theme, which was the news. Fake news. Clickbait. Tabloids screaming horrors. Working with the artistAleksandra Mir, he conjured a collection that felt—and this is a compliment—very much like falling down the rabbit hole of a never-ending Facebook feed. Just a cacophony of headlines. Speaking before the show, Scott explained that the target of his critique was less the media, per se, than the symbiotic relationship between content creators and an audience on the hunt for cheap thrills and responding to articles before they’ve been read. The clothes were jam-packed with trigger words, likescandalandchaos. The latter literally glittered its allure, in grayscale Swarovski crystals.Another something completely different here: the silhouettes. Though the collection boasted its fair share of lithe trousers and abbreviated skirts, of the typical Scott kind, what jumped out were the bouffant party dresses, with skirts of layered tulle silk-screened in newsprint patterns. There were other recherché formal gestures, too, like tux tails on jackets, but frothy frocks were emphasized, and they really drove home Scott’s notion that we media consumers are kind of wading through a fog these days. Newsprint-patterned puffers had a similar piquancy, and numbered among the pieces that seemed likely to find fans outside the fiefdom of Jeremy Scott loyalists. For all the concision of the palette and the tightly encircled theme, though, there was a quite a bit of variety in the collection’s technique—patches rudely slapped onto coats, distressing tearing up jeans and sweaters, fringe like scraps of paper, sequins embroidered to shape out bits of words. The irony may be that in directing a cannon blast at clickbait, Scott wound up designing clothes as tempting to the id as a headline like “39 Reasons Why Millennials Are Garbage.” Click.
8 February 2019
Here’s a fun fact about Jeremy Scott: He never throws anything away. Not clothes, at any rate; speaking before his celebrity-studded show tonight, Scott recalled that, when he was 13, he threw away a shirt he thought he didn’t like anymore, only to regret that choice a week later, and resolve, henceforward, to keep everything he could, just in case. “If I’ve worn it, it’s in a box somewhere,” he said. For his latest collection, Scott opened those boxes—figuratively, at least. Jeremy Scott’s muse this time out was Jeremy Scott, circa those tender-aged years when he was designing his own outré clothes and trying out eyebrow-raising hairdos and makeup looks to match.Polaroids of young Scott featured in prints in this exceptionally well-put-together collection. Other aspects of his ’90s-era aesthetic elaborated the theme of self-celebration—though it’s much to Scott’s credit that his recycling of grunge plaid and club-kid neon didn’t come off as nostalgic. Rather, his trip down memory lane read as a joyful pastiche, the looks de-literalized and given a romantic gloss of sequins or crystals or a jolt of the absurd via metastasized proportions and/or 3-D embroideries reading “Riot,” “Hyper,” “Sex,” “Peace.”If there was an adolescent frisson to those sentiments, the production of the collection was 100 percent adult. In the past few years, Scott has taken the finishing of his clothes to a new level. The polish was especially notable here in the leather and sport mesh pieces inspired by motocross, and sui generis overalls with zips back and front and built-in stiletto heels. Maybe a better way to describe the latter garment, in fact, would be “over-the-shoulder boots”—but however they’re termed, they exemplified Scott’s ability to take a look that could easily seem wackadoodle and make it read as weird, yes, but also refined. Mesh or leather pieces covered with NBA logos managed the same neat trick. Perhaps Jeremy Scott has matured as a designer; perhaps the wackadoodle world has just caught up with him, at last. Scott’s approach to making fashion continues to seem the most sensible in this fraught political climate: He’s a missionary for the idea that the best way to resist—another word that showed up on clothes here—is to be brazenly, unapologetically yourself. To be your own muse, as it were. Going on the evidence of this Jeremy Scott–inspired Jeremy Scott show, that’s not a bad tack.
6 September 2018
“It’s almost like this feeling in sci-fi movies—ridiculously sci-fi movies—where you see people walking around in the background, wearing things where you’re like, ‘Whaaaaaat! How is this even possible?!’ ” With that, Scott tied the ribbon on his Fall women’s and men’s collection, shown together: It was zany, brainy, brilliant in spots and thought-provoking in others. In concrete terms, think: ’80s Italian discos, arcade claw–grab games,The Fifth Element, Juicy-esque tracksuits, neon accessories like the kind you crack open on the Fourth of July, and a hell of a lot of fluorescent fluff (including on the Longchamp bags that Scott lines his front row with each season).Scott celebrated his 20th anniversary six months ago; Fall didn’t depart from his m.o., but it did introduce a few new bits to his singular planet, like, for example, “thigh-high skyscraper Moon Boots” (a new collaboration, with shorter versions available for guys). Likewise, a new capsule with MAC Cosmetics, which dropped today. Also: “I’m working on this particular piece,” he said, pointing to his run-of-show backstage. “It’s like a track jacket and a bra had a baby.” The cropped top, which had an almost corset-like hoist around the chest but then a standard, easy fit around the arms (some had hoods), was easily envisioned on the Gigis (Hadid opened the show) and the Kendalls and possibly the Cardis (B sat front row) of the world. As has been observed, Scott, in his uncompromisingly independent way, is often ahead of the curve, and it was interesting to consider this relatively low-key and casual focus juxtaposed against his more futuro-camp instincts. Will these track jacket–bra hybrids be worn under lava lamp–like rainbow leopard-print sheer sashes, or will structured skirts in see-through orange PVC soon be paired with mini denim jackets, also with built-in pseudo-bras? Who knows, but it’s not so far removed from the believable, given the designer’s track record.Much more in this sci-fi flick flew or slinked by: parachute strapping; puffers with all-over pocketing; a print that morphed the Jeremy Scott name into a font that looked obtusely like Hindi writing; Jetson-like hooped skirting; and metallic finishes on outerwear all included. The fluff (and the cartoon-bear prints) were inspired by Popples bears. Popples were toys that were introduced in the ’80s—sort of like, this writer imagines, the Beanie Babies of the era.
Scott has long enjoyed an animated character or two in his collections, but the Popples had a more perverse undertone. “Cicciolina”—the Hungarian-Italian porn star—“used to carry them. So there’s this seductress and cute and cuddly thing at the same time,” said the designer. And maybe that’s the story, the takeaway from this wild space odyssey romp: total confidence, expressed through kitsch. And nobody, in any universe, does that better than Jeremy Scott.
8 February 2018
Here’s the thing about Jeremy Scott. You may look at his collections and think, What is this nonsense? You may be absolutely sure that you would never wear his clothes. His freaky, occasionally perverse, but ultimately sweet-natured glitter-spangled sensibility may be utterly lost on you. But after 20 years, even Scott’s most ardent doubters must—must—give the designer his due. It’s not just that Scott has managed to build a thriving business in an industry that’s difficult even for those who didn’t launch their careers as a fashion outcast staging their own off-schedule shows in Paris. Scott deserves credit for that, but more of it for spearheading, long ago, bandwagons that other brands are only now jumping onto: He was ahead on both diverse and celebrity casting, he was ahead on athleisure, he was ahead on treating fashion not as exclusive preserve for the rich and thin and haughty, but as a club that everyone was welcome into. So he well-deserved the standing ovation that greeted him tonight, as he took his bow following his 20th anniversary show. Scott has earned his place among the fashion luminaries.As might have been expected, Scott spent some time this season looking back on his past outings, and drawing on those collections for inspiration. His loyal followers surely recognized numerous motifs—the deconstructed sweats, the eye-searing neon palette, the scabrous cartoons, the riff on football pads in some of his over-the-knee boots. And so on. Speaking before the show, Scott said while he wanted to revisit his old ideas, he was adamant about refreshing them, and making them relevant for today. “It was a challenging process,” he acknowledged. But the effort was invisible on the runway. Like any very good Jeremy Scott collection, this one came off as playful, bordering on antic: You imagined that Scott was really enjoying himself, adding deconstructed sweatshirt elements to garments, scribbling cartoons on denim and camo, figuring out all the places he could conceivably add crystal and sequins to looks, and conjuring dresses that looked like oversize ticky-tacky necklaces. If you’re the kind of guy who’s been longing for a pair of pink, all-over sequined jeans, this collection was for you. Ditto if you’re a girl who likes the idea of trousers in theory, but would prefer if they came in acid colors, and see-through.
But even people whose dress sense is a little less outré could find items to fasten upon here, be it a pair of perfectly slouchy cargo pants, the crystal mesh biker jacket worn by Devon Aoki, Scott’s longtime muse, as she opened the show, or—must-have alert!—the laced, over-the-knee combat boots that stole the hearts of more than a few folks seated in the front row. At this point, though, fashion folk would be wise to reconsider their tentativeness when approaching Scott’s collections, and stop cherry-picking accessible looks. Go for the disco-ball bodysuit worn by Coco Rocha—because, for gosh sake, if the past twenty years have taught us anything, it’s that Jeremy Scott knows more about the future of fashion than we do.
9 September 2017
Jeremy Scott isangry. That isn’t a tone one generally associates with this most playful of designers, but it’s plain that November’s presidential election results have gotten Scott good-and-hopping mad. It wasn’t just the front-of-house worker bees clad in Scott-designed shirts with the numbers of congressmen printed on the back that clued you into his current mood; the collection on the shag-carpeted runway had a furious undercurrent, too. With its tips of the hat to Michael Jackson, Vegas-era Elvis, and Jesus, Scott was making a point about celebrity worship—he conceded as much backstage after the show—and for all the collection’s sparkle and frill, his point seemed to be: Kill Yr Idols.Or, at the very least, don’t elect them to high office. That eye-catching man in the gold-sequined pants, he may look a vision, but he probably has the mental capacity of the cartoon character that appears on his tee, the one expelling toxic green steam out of the top of his head. If Scott’s message here was discernible, it was hardly overt; indeed, there was something genuinely radical in the way he flipped his fears about our new administration around, responding to the potential for a crackdown on liberties by claiming space for fun. As much fun as possible. As much fun as an American is free to have. The bedazzled country star leather, the showgirl fringe, the vaguely mother’s-little-helper pill polka dots, the hot pink velvet and the heaps of that scrunched chiffon used in peignoir trim—all this came across as defiant, more so even than the military-inspired anoraks or hippie-ish patchwork leather and distressed denim. It was like the sartorial equivalent of that LGBTQ dance party in front of Mike Pence’s house. This is what freedom looks like, Scott seemed to be saying, in his own ludic vernacular.And then, as noted, there was Jesus. The savior’s face opened the show, gazing out from the legs of a pair of flared velvet trousers worn by Gigi Hadid, and recurred numerous times in both adult and infant form (cradled, in the latter instance, by an intarsia-knit Madonna.) The fact that Scott’s Jesus was cribbed from souvenir rugs may lead other interpreters of this collection to believe he was spitting on Christianity, but throughout his career Scott has warmed to tacky references, so that surely wasn’t the idea. Rather, he seemed to be pursuing a deeper theme, one bound up with the collection’s vivid sexuality.
This was a catwalk full of Strip hustlers and boudoir bunnies, and taken together with the Jesus riff, these motifs suggested that Scott was thinking a lot about solace, and the places one finds it. Maybe you find it in a portrait of Christ. Maybe you find it in a one-night-lover’s bed. For now, at least, that’s your choice.
11 February 2017
This summer, the Metrograph cinema on the Lower East Side staged a revival of Susan Seidelman’s obscure debut feature film,Smithereens, which was set in the same general environs as the theater. Originally released in 1982, the movie documents the hardscrabble lifestyle of the young bohemians then making the scene, and though it’s a dark film, in certain ways, its characters seem all the more alive for the fact that their existence in downtown New York City was premised on a daily struggle just to survive.Smithereensinduced mixed emotions: Exiting the theater, it was hard not to appreciate the well-scrubbed city that has taken the place of cesspool Manhattan in the past 30-odd years—and at the same time, mourn the loss of the borough’s population of feisty weirdos.Jeremy Scott’s latest collection broughtSmithereensinstantly to mind, as it was a paean to the city’s good ol’ bad ol’ days. Speaking before the show, Scott acknowledged that he was waxing nostalgic about a difficult era he never had to endure; his was a rose-tinted take on early-’80s days of East Village squats, barmy club nights, and pervy peep shows. Perhaps a neon pink–tinted take is more accurate. The reason this period of depredation continues to fascinate is that it conjures a bygone vibrancy—a time when New Yorkers could get up to all kinds of freakiness, thanks to the fact that they were largely ignored. Scott got at that vibrancy through his flashy palette and jutting geometries, motifs that came fully to life in his series of sculptural, sequined show-closing looks.This was largely a show about sex. Bondage elements like latex and collars, clothes half unzipped, garments with peepholes, grainy porno prints, tees and knits shoutingHOT HOT HOTandRated X. Scott’s spin on the theme was intriguing in its cheerfulness; his pervs were oddly heroic in their latex trenchcoats and skintight micro-minis and, for the beefcake men on the runway, neon motorcycle jackets and taut checkerboard jeans. It was all very commercial, by Scott standards, lots of peppy colors and accessible silhouettes. But where there’s a hero, there must be a villain: In Scott’s telling, that was an alien come to cover the city with a layer of slime. ReplacealienwithGiulianiandslimewithmoney, and the collection’s narrative flourish didn’t seem so far-fetched. Enter Jeremy Scott, stage left—embodied in the form of a tube of toothpaste, “Cool Mint Jeremy,” there to save the day by wiping away the city’s decay.
In this case, not to make it spiffy clean, but to reveal the grit.
12 September 2016
News flash: This is a presidential election year. The campaign motto of the current front-runner for the Republican ticket is “Make America great again,” a call to action that both implies that the U.S. of A. isn’t so great anymore and raises the question: What was great about us in the first place?Jeremy Scott’s latest collection provided a few answers. Denim. Electric guitars. Rhinestone cowboys. Most of all, though, these rockabilly-inflected clothes paid tribute to outsize American optimism, the kind that accounts for the Space Race, on the one hand, and the armada of wannabe stars who have made their way to places such as downtown New York City, Nashville, and the Sunset Strip over the years, armed only with their big dreams and the sense that nothing, here, is impossible.This subliminal theme was well suited to Scott’s over-the-top vernacular. His intarsia-knit minidresses, reflective leathers, and motorcycle jackets in acid-trip–color animal prints projected the usual cartoonish club-kid tone, an attitude Scott doubled down on in looks heavily embellished with crystal and fringe. A pair of crystal-bedazzled leather pants might not be for every guy, or a miniskirt dangling all manner of plastic charms for every girl, but less outré Scott fans could get a piece of the Americana action by way of the collection’s multicolored denim or kooky airbrushed tees.The surrealism of his everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach was entirely purposeful. Speaking before the show, Scott said that he was going for a “Dalí on molly” vibe. You could argue that Dalí on molly isn’t a bad reflection of the warping effects of American consumer society’s super-abundance—so much to get our hands on! so little time!—but such an argument seems a bit too vinegary to attribute to Scott. Not that he didn’t get a few subversive licks in, too. The most obvious of these were his pieces featuring the antic cartoon characters Ren and Stimpy. There has always been an undertow to American optimism, pointed out by satirists who show us the dark side of various forms of cultural excess. Scott’s collection asserted that the piss-takers must be included in the Americana canon, too. They also make us great.
15 February 2016
This is your brain.Thisis your brain on screens. IfJeremy Scott’s latest collection had a subtext—and it’s not clear that it did—it was that our brains are going a little screwy due to overexposure to screens. Check out the insane-looking cartoon faces on Scott’s new intarsia knits: Isn’t that kind of how your mind feels after several consecutive hours of binge-watchingUnREALwhile simultaneously answering emails on your laptop and glossing Instagram on your phone?Anyway. The screen thing was very much an ur-text of Scott’s latest effort, with its digital television prints and trippy sweaters knit to look the way old television screens did when they went a little wonky. That was all part of Scott’s larger theme, which was an homage to sixties era B-movies and sci-fi that he interpreted with his typical heaping of club-kid flash. The era’s tropes were rehearsed in everything from abbreviated A-line silhouettes to ray-gun prints to the paillette mesh that was an overt tip-of-the-hat to Cardin. As usual, Scott seemed to be having more fun making fashion than anyone else on the scene these days, but the lineup’s buoyant tone didn’t disguise the fact that this was a pretty disciplined collection. The men’s looks were eye-popping, but they hewed to classic shapes—guys with some daring in the fashion department might be swayed by a button down in Scott’s scribble print, or a leather biker spotted with white polka dots. Lots of the women’s looks, meanwhile, could appeal to customers outside the Jeremy cult, to wit, the tulle pieces with high-contrast sequin stripes, or summery short sheaths covered in the scribble or raygun prints. A cocktail dress, black on top, with a ribbon at the waist and a bouffant pink and silver brocade skirt, was downright homecoming queen mainstream.Scott’s rigor was also demonstrated in his materials and his technique. The paillettes on the opening look worn byGigi Hadid, for instance, were bordered by seed pearl embroidery. And Scott’s deftness with textiles was witnessed best in the very simplest of his ensembles, a matching cropped sweater and miniskirt set down in a cool spongy knit. Nothing looked tossed-off here, in other words, just as nothing looked really, truly nuts. Scott’s experience at Moschino seems to have convinced him there’s some fun to be had, too, in selling tons of clothes.
14 September 2015
By lucky coincidence, this morning theTimes Literary Supplementin London published a review by Anna Katharina Schaffner ofTwee, a book by Marc Spitz. (Not the swimmer Marc Spitz; a different one.) That was lucky because, as Schaffner considered Spitz's assertion that "twee," the artisanal-everything, retro-anything, cute-curating lifestyle that's emerged over the past decade, is this generation's answer to punk, she essentially deconstructed today's Jeremy Scott collection in advance. "Twee," she wrote, "is a symptom of profound cultural exhaustion, a pop-cultural response to the death of grand narratives and radical politics: too weary to fight the corporate capitalist machine, the twee instead create hyper-stylized alternative worlds in which kittens play, ukuleles sound, and childhood is eternal."Without Schaffner's guidance, it might have been tempting to dismiss Scott's show as glib—a romp through the baby-doll dress and wackadoo cartoon character territory of Meadham Kirchhoff, but drained of that brand's anger and subversive energy. But the heaping helpings of literally infantile cuteness on the Scott runway didn't really rub you that way. There was a certain ludic joy to the proceedings, as there always is with Scott, but his nursery rhyme-inspired clothes for grown-up girls and boys were so over-the-top adorable that the collection begged to be read as a critique.You want cuuuuuute?You want totes adorbs?Scott seemed to be saying.Well how about this…It was the sartorial equivalent of having a frosted gluten-free cupcake smashed in your face.It was also Scott's best collection in ages. Not just because of its content, but because of its execution. These clothes were immaculate. The printed silk baby dolls were expertly cut, and Scott's innovations with patent leather were mind-bogglingly original. The material was printed in bright checks and stripes or with cartoon animal patterns fit for crib blankets, then buffed to a mirror shine and then, in some cases, quilted. The results were rather dazzling, particularly in a striped, ruffled crop top and matching abbreviated A-line skirt, and a short coat in a pastel blanket print. Elsewhere, Scott made equally good use of multicolor patchwork leather—a pair of men's jeans in the leather seemed credible, in a way that Scott's men's clothes frequently do not. (Outside of a club context, at any rate.
) Further news on the fabric front: the show-closing dresses in sculpted canvas, loosely inspired by the work of Claes Oldenburg and painted on by artist Rosson Crow. These were intended as showpieces, to be sure, but they underlined the fact that Scott has been giving rigorous thought to the possibilities of textiles.The most clever thing here, though, was the way Scott wove a dark, trippy note through the collection. He was inspired by nursery rhymes and dolls, he said after the show, but also by psychedelia like those '70s-era black light posters. The hallucinogenic tone gave this seemingly weightless outing its sense of gravity. Scott's kids this season were twee as fuck, for sure. But they seemed not a little haunted, too.For Tim Blanks' take on Jeremy Scott, watch this video.
18 February 2015
Anyone who's ever wandered the grounds of a major music festival would have no trouble recognizing the atmosphere at today's Jeremy Scott show. There was a sort of ecstasy-fueled, daytime rave ersatzness to it—girls in baby-doll dresses and guys in graphic tees rubbing elbows with the patchouli-scented wannabe hippies and the at-large club kids, their pupils a pinprick. The vibe was fun and the clothes were fun, and as far as Scott was concerned, that was the point. As he explained, he was going low concept this season, mixing up ideas in an intuitive way. That approach yielded no big, memorable statement looks—but it did make for a collection with true mainstream appeal. Sure, Mr. Average America might be a hard sell on Scott's patchwork leather trousers, which were partially made from old collection scrap, but he's going to covet that "Game Over" sweater. On the XX side of things, meanwhile, there were a ton of low-barrier-to-entry pieces, ranging from a striped knit skirt and crop top set to a mini bomber jacket in bright orange leather. And girls are going to be coveting those patterned baby dolls: Scott could open a whole store full of them and call it Haute Topic. The store could also sell the jewelry seen at the show, which was made by some random person no one's ever heard of, or seen naked on a wrecking ball. Sweet girl, though—she was so nervous and excited when the first look came out, she put her Polaroid film into her camera backward. And then spent much of the rest of the show trying to unjam it.
10 September 2014
The culture of the locker room and all things sport was the starting point for Jeremy Scott this season. That much was self-evident from the fuzzy football-jersey maxi dresses that opened the show, not to mention the basketball leathers, tube-sock knits, mesh tops, and scoreboard prints. That's a collection Scott can design in his sleep, pretty much, but what elevated this one was the designer's way of presenting all this machismo as part of a kind of theater of cruelty. No, no, Scott was not trying to make a big philosophical point here—that's not his way—but there was something mean and violent under the surface of this presentation. It manifested in the confrontational Madballs knits, and it was there in the remarkable corset skirts and bustiers that appeared to have been fashioned from football pads. The Marquis de Sade would have been a fan of those pieces; he probably would have wielded a whipping towel in the locker room with some major panache. Not everything had to do with the subversive element of torture, however. As Scott pointed out afterward, those fuzzy knits marked a real evolution for him, since he doesn't usually do so much texture and he wasn't sure what the girls walking the show would make of them. "Carlyne said, 'Don't worry,'" he recalled, quoting his legendary stylist, Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele. "She said, 'Theyll love them; they're just so…cozy.'"
11 February 2014
The show began with the beep of a technical disturbance, and the first outfit, an abbreviated suit—leather briefs, leather cardigan jacket, matching leather booties—came in the color-bar stripe of old television test patterns. Do not adjust your set: Jeremy Scott is here to interrupt your regularly scheduled NYFW programming.But as interruptions go, you could set your watch by Scott's. Every Wednesday of New York fashion week receives this familiar intervention. The crowd is reliably pound-for-pound the week's truest representation of on-the-street fashion obsession—versus jaded, editorial dutifulness. And you know to be prepared for the interminable wait for the celebrity front-row to finally file in (this time, Nicki Minaj and A$AP Rocky).And then the collection. The accoutrements—Eugene Souleiman's bouffant wigs, Michel Gaubert's girl-group soundtrack bubbling over with "Lollipop" and "My Boyfriend's Back"—suggested the moment when the fifties met the sixties. But the clothes themselves were vintage Scott. His short, tight, and sugary designs, rarely looser than second skin and longer than barely there, are playbook by now. Despite his increasingly high-profile collaborators, key among them his stylist as of last season, Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, the designer seems immovably settled into his own idiom. There's no shortage of fans for it, as his presentations amply demonstrate, but the clockwork regularity of it makes you wonder why he feels a need to demonstrate it so amply. At fifty-five looks, his show was one of the longest of the week.The news here came from a partnership with the great Pop artist Kenny Scharf, who worked with Scott on prints: glowering tribal-mask heads, Scharfian toothpaste-y squiggles, and cartoon faces. The show notes included a glowing quote from Scharf (calling the collaboration the "greatest, most fun thing ever," among other encomia). Clearly last season's unpleasantness over Scott's googly monster prints—allegedly lifted without permission from the work of Jim Phillips of Santa Cruz Skateboards and the subject of a lawsuit, reportedly now settled out of court—was not to be repeated. So some things do change for the better. A few pieces that looked like pages ripped straight from Scharf's sketchbook, cut and sewn, made a case for the rewards of responsibility.
10 September 2013
In a Year of Punk—so opineth the Met—all eyes ought to turn to Jeremy Scott. Scott, nose-thumber that he is, turned all eyes back out. Cara Delevingne made the opening turn of the Fall show in a cropped cone-bra top and miniskirt printed with dangling eyeballs and a drooling, lumpy monster's mouth. Other dresses and several sweaters had pairs of googly, glowering eyes. What were they? Some saw Spongebob, melting into a 'roid-induced rage. Others thought the Garbage Pail Kids. Scott mentioned the posters and skate decks West Coast surfers, skaters, and punks used to tack on their walls. Whatever it was, it packed an infectious graphic punch—here's looking at you, kid!Grungy SoCal punk 'n' skate is Scott's primal scene. "I just really wanted to have that potpourri of all those things," he said after the show. "It's very much a teenage boy's messy, puke-y fantasy." It's his fantasy, even if, as one of his seasonal message tees ruefully noted, Adults Suck, Then You Are One.Every Scott show will have its short skirts, skintight tops, bolts of sheer. That's a given. This one also had cohesion, and not just because little bulging-eye-print bucket bags matched little bulging-eye-print dresses. Scott's may have been a messy fantasy but it was a controlled chaos. Some credit may be due to an intriguing new collaborator: the legendary stylist Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, stepping in on this show for the first time. The union of L.A.'s outsider king and Paris' industry queen suggested that punk really may have the ear of power this season. It was "heaven" to work with her, Scott said. "She gets me. She understands the mix of the street, the high and the low—which has always been my style, as well as hers."
12 February 2013
In a Year of Punk—so opineth the Met—all eyes ought to turn to Jeremy Scott. Scott, nose-thumber that he is, turned all eyes back out. Cara Delevingne made the opening turn of the Fall show in a cropped cone-bra top and miniskirt printed with dangling eyeballs and a drooling, lumpy monster's mouth. Other dresses and several sweaters had pairs of googly, glowering eyes. What were they? Some saw Spongebob, melting into a 'roid-induced rage. Others thought the Garbage Pail Kids. Scott mentioned the posters and skate decks West Coast surfers, skaters, and punks used to tack on their walls. Whatever it was, it packed an infectious graphic punch—here's looking at you, kid!Grungy SoCal punk 'n' skate is Scott's primal scene. "I just really wanted to have that potpourri of all those things," he said after the show. "It's very much a teenage boy's messy, puke-y fantasy." It's his fantasy, even if, as one of his seasonal message tees ruefully noted, Adults Suck, Then You Are One.Every Scott show will have its short skirts, skintight tops, bolts of sheer. That's a given. This one also had cohesion, and not just because little bulging-eye-print bucket bags matched little bulging-eye-print dresses. Scott's may have been a messy fantasy but it was a controlled chaos. Some credit may be due to an intriguing new collaborator: the legendary stylist Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, stepping in on this show for the first time. The union of L.A.'s outsider king and Paris' industry queen suggested that punk really may have the ear of power this season. It was "heaven" to work with her, Scott said. "She gets me. She understands the mix of the street, the high and the low—which has always been my style, as well as hers."
12 February 2013
Jeremy Scott may be fashion's ultimate divisive/inclusive designer. There are plenty in the stiff-upper-lip echelons of the industry who dismiss him. There are as many others who find his manic joy infectious. It's hard to imagine another designer who could entice Tyra Banks and Paris Hilton, Grimes and Ryan Lochte into his front row. But actually, Scott's is the rare show where the best action is in the standing section. That's where the true believers are, bedecked in their best Scott, which means pants sprouting teddy bears and leather jackets bursting into appliquéd flames. There were (at least) two girls in the same JS top-and-skirt sweater set with an allover intarsia of Bart Simpson's face. Anywhere else, this might've been cause for a bout of gasping pique. Here, it was cause for an Instagram.Scott's new collection was a riff on Middle Eastern themes. He'd been watching the news, he explained backstage after the show. "The Arab Spring," he said, "could be a fashion moment." That's a minefield, metaphorically and otherwise. Scott is not without his love of bad taste, and some of his more provocative moments rankled here, in part because they seemed obvious. The leopard-print, sequined burka, worn over a mesh tank dress to reveal a model's underwear. The croc-printed leathers in oily, petroleum black. The metal-mesh chain mail dangling golden coins and machine-gun charms. Scott insisted those were in tribute to the guns raised in celebration of democracy and peace. Some guns are. Then again, whatever his intentions may have been, some guns aren't.The moments where the touch was lighter, accordingly, flew higher. There were some cute skirts, jackets, and even a baseball jersey in sky blue snakeskin-printed leather. Days' worth of prints—leopard, giraffe, kaffiyeh, and more—should satisfy some fans, while marquee appreciators will battle for the bandeau tops and lavishly embroidered sheer black evening pants. Scott didn't reinvent the wheel on this one, but he may have figured out a savvy new way to monetize it. Spring marked the beginning of a collaboration with New Era on snap-back caps in the collection's fabrics and prints, which accessorized every look. They could sell a million among the faithful.
11 September 2012
Faulkner famously said, "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." Today, in his own way, Jeremy Scott said it, too. He was thinking of the persistence of the past in the perma-present culture of the Internet, when anything and everything is just a Google search away. "Things don't ever go away now," he said backstage. "Deleting history isn't really possible."The rainbow spectacle he staged today looked back to the nineties, and at moments it seemed to glance at the way the nineties looked to the seventies, and, well, if you took out your magnifying glass, you'd, like, find a little bit of whatever you happened to look for. That's the conceptual bit. More literally, there were sweat suits, stretch dresses, and leggings printed with computer screen shots and instant-message emoticons. "We use them to communicate our emotions," Scott explained. "I'm angry, I'm happy, I'm horny, I feel kind of flirty. That's now a legitimate answer." He sounded a little rueful, actually, as he mimed pressing a button. "Boop!"Is Jeremy angry? Happy? Feeling kind of flirty? Though he mentioned the euphoria of all those rainbows, the collection didn't seem to show his hand. It was more of a skittering LOL through the way we live now. (Though there's luxe lurking beneath the candy-coated exterior. Scott's rainbow chubby was Saga Fur; the rainbow-wig coat, 100 percent human hair. As Faulkner's fellow Southern folklorist Dolly Parton once said, "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.") It wasn't Scott's most wearable offering, but it did confirm him once again as a provocateur—and maybe a more thoughtful one than he sometimes gets credit for. He, in turn, paid homage, with a series of knits, to one who came before. The nineties' original bad boy: Bart Simpson.
14 February 2012
Faulkner famously said, "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." Today, in his own way, Jeremy Scott said it, too. He was thinking of the persistence of the past in the perma-present culture of the Internet, when anything and everything is just a Google search away. "Things don't ever go away now," he said backstage. "Deleting history isn't really possible."The rainbow spectacle he staged today looked back to the nineties, and at moments it seemed to glance at the way the nineties looked to the seventies, and, well, if you took out your magnifying glass, you'd, like, find a little bit of whatever you happened to look for. That's the conceptual bit. More literally, there were sweat suits, stretch dresses, and leggings printed with computer screen shots and instant-message emoticons. "We use them to communicate our emotions," Scott explained. "I'm angry, I'm happy, I'm horny, I feel kind of flirty. That's now a legitimate answer." He sounded a little rueful, actually, as he mimed pressing a button. "Boop!"Is Jeremy angry? Happy? Feeling kind of flirty? Though he mentioned the euphoria of all those rainbows, the collection didn't seem to show his hand. It was more of a skittering LOL through the way we live now. (Though there's luxe lurking beneath the candy-coated exterior. Scott's rainbow chubby was Saga Fur; the rainbow-wig coat, 100 percent human hair. As Faulkner's fellow Southern folklorist Dolly Parton once said, "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.") It wasn't Scott's most wearable offering, but it did confirm him once again as a provocateur—and maybe a more thoughtful one than he sometimes gets credit for. He, in turn, paid homage, with a series of knits, to one who came before. The nineties' original bad boy: Bart Simpson.
14 February 2012
Jeremy Scott's invitation was a beach-and-palms picture postcard—"Greetings From Paradise!"—and on the back, in Scott's scrawl, "Wish you were here." It was tempting to think that, in the current moment of Hawaiiana, which has found an unlikely following among a number of designers, Scott was going to go all-out and put on a luau the likes of which this trend has never seen. Over the top of over-the-top is his calling card, after all. But you can expect this designer to shy away from the expected. What Scott turned out instead was a freckled fantasy of life back on the farm, refracted through Hollywood lenses. Elly May Clampett ofThe Beverly Hillbillieswas the collection's guiding light, though you could see Miss Daisy Duke in the mix, too. Country-boy bandannas were done up in metal mesh and turned into handkerchief minidresses. Bib overalls were cut and pasted into skirts and halter tops. There were cow prints for country cute, but also cactus motifs out of Santa Fe. Why? Don't ask. Scott sent out a dress dangling giant question marks. There's the only answer you'll get.Few designers can claim to have followed the Clampett example, but as Scott pointed out backstage, he grew up on a farm outside of Kansas City, Missouri, and eventually hightailed it,Beverly Hillbillies-style, to Hollywood. The show was a return of sorts, and, as the designer said with a laugh backstage, "there's no place like home." The personal connection might have lent an intimacy to the proceedings, but actually this offering felt a little more remote than some of a recent vintage, like the remember-those-days gods-and-party-monsters collection from Fall 2011. The saving grace turned out to be the shoes, in particular, needle-nosed creepers for the guys—a preview of Scott's Adidas collaboration to come.
13 September 2011
Jeremy Scott's invitation was a beach-and-palms picture postcard—"Greetings From Paradise!"—and on the back, in Scott's scrawl, "Wish you were here." It was tempting to think that, in the current moment of Hawaiiana, which has found an unlikely following among a number of designers, Scott was going to go all-out and put on a luau the likes of which this trend has never seen. Over the top of over-the-top is his calling card, after all. But you can expect this designer to shy away from the expected. What Scott turned out instead was a freckled fantasy of life back on the farm, refracted through Hollywood lenses. Elly May Clampett ofThe Beverly Hillbillieswas the collection's guiding light, though you could see Miss Daisy Duke in the mix, too. Country-boy bandannas were done up in metal mesh and turned into handkerchief minidresses. Bib overalls were cut and pasted into skirts and halter tops. There were cow prints for country cute, but also cactus motifs out of Santa Fe. Why? Don't ask. Scott sent out a dress dangling giant question marks. There's the only answer you'll get.Few designers can claim to have followed the Clampett example, but as Scott pointed out backstage, he grew up on a farm outside of Kansas City, Missouri, and eventually hightailed it,Beverly Hillbillies-style, to Hollywood. The show was a return of sorts, and, as the designer said with a laugh backstage, "there's no place like home." The personal connection might have lent an intimacy to the proceedings, but actually this offering felt a little more remote than some of a recent vintage, like the remember-those-days gods-and-party-monsters collection from Fall 2011. The saving grace turned out to be the shoes, in particular, needle-nosed creepers for the guys—a preview of Scott's Adidas collaboration to come.
13 September 2011
Jeremy Scott believes, devoutly, that "You should have fun with fashion." He said it after the show, wrinkling his nose at some of his overserious fellow designers. "It shouldn't be a church that you pray to," he added. This from the guy who two seasons ago made a return-to-New York splash with little black dresses bedecked with crystal crosses—probably about as close to an ecclesiastical habit as he's likely ever to get. And if fashion isn't a fabulous sort of church, what gives with the first look in his Fall collection that hit the runway today—a metal-mesh tank digitally printed with a twisted version of the Coke logo: "Enjoy God"?Never mind that for the moment. A Jeremy Scott collection is often a grab bag of different ideas, and God was only one of those on display here. The more dominant one was the nineties. "I was thinking a lot about 1994: going to school, getting dressed up to go to parties, the enthusiasm I had," Scott continued. There was bombast to spare in his haute nineties—so joyfully vulgar you wanted to call itbasnineties—furry neon dresses in angora (a new material for the label), plastic jackets, and Manic Panic-ed pigtails. Scott mentioned Gregg Araki'sNowhereas a reference;Cluelesswas in the mix, too.Those little dresses were silly but short enough to be sexy, which in Scott-land means they'll likely sell. Who knows whether the same is true of the superhero frocks that capped the show, emblazoned with lightning bolts, trailing capes. The final look was a floor-length, glittering evening take on Superman's famous outfit. Superman—there's a secular, spandex-clad deity if there ever was one. Scott, true believer that he is, hymns him in sequins. My God is an awesome God, dude!
15 February 2011
Last season, Jeremy Scott moved his itinerant runway show—which has had spells in almost every major fashion capital—back to New York. Apparently, the influence is taking hold. He was thinking, he said backstage, of "cool girls in New York City, from Debbie Harry to Leigh Lezark—all the girls that go to all the clubs, from Max's Kansas City to the Boom Boom Room today."Looking good on a budget has always been a quality that distinguishes New York's devoted nightlifers, like Harry in her salad days. (Lezark wasn't always a Chanel ambassador with the keys to the golden closet, you know.) Scott's homage to that make-do spirit took the form of tank tops that were pretty fair facsimiles of deli bags. (They were actually made of silky polyester, not plastic.) "I Love NY," one read, in Milton Glaser's classic logo. "Thank You for Shopping Here," said another. "Fuck You," a third.Well, OK. If you're looking for coherence, keep looking. Scott was trying, he said, "to link things in an ethereal way, rather than a concrete way." So the plastic bags gave way to a series of latex dresses, a few "No Sales Are Final" knits that combined department-store platitudes with B-movie poster art, and a couple of embarrassed-looking male models in crotchless, shorts-length chaps. You can't say it's not entertaining. Scott's many celebrity friends and front-row fans were certainly having a good time. He sends out "Fuck You," and at his bow, they leap, cheering, to their feet.
14 September 2010
"I can be a freak, every day of every week," boomed from the sound system. It was the new single from Estelle, debuting at the show (as she sat in the front row)—but it might just as well have been Jeremy Scott's own cri de coeur. Scott is one of fashion's freak-flag fliers, and proudly so. This is a guy who makes coats of Mickey Mouse gloves and dresses in Flintstones prints. But as his collections go, Fall was downright normal.Hanger Appeal, his salute to fashion itself, featured a blend of sporty, salable print pieces (here, featuring a leggy fashion-mag illustration), riffs on the classics (Le Smoking; the JPG cone bra, recast as a pair of pasties/suspenders), and a lengthy section of Lucite jewel- and cross-covered dresses, bodysuits, and tops ("cross dressing," yuk, yuk). There were the showstoppers, of course, including the pièce de résistance, an elegant evening dress with a long train that was actually an attached slip, carried by the model on a gilded Jeremy Scott hanger.Given our choice, we'd take the knits—the best of them, a batwing sweater that spelled out "Fashion" and "Style" with the arms extended—or the tricked-out Schott moto jackets, bedecked with fur sleeves, more jewels, and a profusion of brass J.S. plaques. Scott's always had a way of ribbing über-branding and practicing it, all at once. He knows that people do pray at the altar of fashion, hence all the crosses. But in a mostly black lineup (color appeared, as he put it, only when "chaperoned by black"), the clothes felt less jokey, more witty than in seasons past. It's his first show back in New York in years, and the city obviously agrees with him. Just take it from the song that played as he took his bow: He's in an "Empire State of Mind."
16 February 2010
As a follow-up to last season's Devo-meets-Thierry Mugler collection, Jeremy Scott staged an elaborate fashion/cinema performance at the Tribeca Grand Hotel that could best be described as Steven Cojocaru-meets-Pierre Cardin.The Beverly Hills–based designer's presentation was a spoof on a Hollywood awards show, as Scott (in a Gucci tuxedo and bandana) greeted each model in the style of a cheesy red-carpet commentator. Asked what she'd like to see more of in Hollywood, Anouck Lepère, in a silver coat with a radiating ring collar, responded “more Belgian movies,” while Croatian model Natasha Vojnovic advocated "peace, no war!" Lisa Marie and Liz Goldwyn were among the celebrities who walked the red carpet and also appeared in Scott’s movie, which premiered after the arrivals show and featured Asia Argento, China Chow, Monet Mazur and Tori Spelling. What did the models wear? Glamour dresses with stencils reading "icon," "bombshell" and "goddess" and featuring the requisite sequins, marabou and lamé. New developments included denims with the designer’s face embroidered on the back pocket and Oscar statuettes on jacket sleeves, as well as custom lamé and leopard-print Adidas/Scott sneakers.While designers like Imitation of Christ try to dissect fashion, Scott takes a literal, good-hearted and adoring approach. For him, it's all about “looking fabulous, darling.”
13 February 2003
Relevance to modern life—and the modern fashion consumer—never seems to be at the forefront of Jeremy Scott's mind. He sees fashion more as an opportunity for cheeky social commentary (as in his "I want money" collection, where models threw fake gold coins into the audience) and a chance to indulge his sense of tongue-in-cheek, kitschy retro-futurism. Sometimes timely and amusing, his collections can also easily veer into the realm of gimmick.Scott’s spring show, called "Venus Rising," might as well have been called "Valley Girls in Space." With a rock-covered stage set and models sporting pointy Vulcan eyebrows and popped-up shoulders, the event recalled his space-age fall presentation, though with a more restrained group of colors. The designer started with some cute, wearable pieces including simple fitted minidresses and jersey shorts and tops. He then segued into a rainbow of bathing suits, some consisting of a mere strip or two of fabric. That was followed by a group of dresses, each with a distinct identity: One featured a pheasant-feather bodice over a shredded tan chiffon skirt, another was a simple silky robe in sea colors.Scott clearly has enough imagination and skill to makes his shows consistently memorable. But his focus on developing a recognizable signature—and the business to go with it—could be stronger.
20 September 2002
Jeremy Scott's New York debut ended fashion week with a jolt of high energy and—in a week of monochromatic, subdued tones—vivid color.The Missouri-born designer, who came to fame in Paris before relocating to Los Angeles, chose New York to show his largest—and most commercially viable—collections to date. And while Scott may not be ready for prime time, he certainly entertained a jaded audience.Scott opened with a series of very mini coats and dresses in amped-up sherbet tones, all infused with his Grace Jones–meets–Judy Jetson spirit (read: sky-high collars and exaggerated, cartoonish shoulder treatments). While the silhouettes were futuristic, the fabrics were resolutely traditional: wool felt, leather and soft jersey. One coat, a sheared mink wrap shown on an otherwise naked model, was basically a furry fig leaf. And while they were wacky, the clothes were well constructed: The manufacture was overseen by a former employee of the notoriously picky designer James Galanos.Scott's tongue-in-cheek attitude was very apparent, but he's also showing a new maturity as a designer. After the far-out coats, he showed a group of knit dresses that were eminently wearable. But those who lean to the left of fashion center shouldn't worry that Scott, who used to end his shows with a cry of "Vive l'avant garde!" has sold out. He ended the presentation with a group of elaborately constructed dresses designed to resemble New York City skyscrapers. If Björk needs something to wear to the Oscars, she need look no further.
14 February 2002
Forget about long, drawn-out conceptualism. In less than 10 minutes, Jeremy Scott managed to not only condense his entire aesthetic into one extravagant performance, but also to send an entire room of jaded editors into a collective roar of laughter.When the curtains of Paris' Cirque d'Hiver were drawn, they revealed a revolving floor of glamorous TV game-show winners, done up to the nines in billowing dollar-bill outfits, plush logo-embossed furs, fitted designer jeans, sequined jumpsuits and zip-up jogging ensembles. The rouge-laden, important-haired celebutantes proudly displayed their hard-earned treasures: a stationary bicycle, a comfy reclining chair, a fabulous piano and, in the case of a less fortunate darling, a humble blender.When the show ended, a second set of curtains opened and Scott, perched upon a fluffy cloud that would've made Jeff Koons proud, shared his wealth of mock $10,000 bills and chocolate gold coins with the audience—just like any bleach-blond, mullet-coiffed, modern-day Bob Barker would.
13 March 2001
Thank God for Jeremy Scott, a designer who knows that fashion is, first and foremost, about having fun. Paris' Musée des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie was transformed into a gigantic suburban mall complete with winding staircase and multihued fountains—the perfect setting for the final collection of the season.Scott showed sharp little suits, day dresses and shorts in a black-and-white print which, upon closer inspection, proved to be tiny sketches of his past designs. Yellow, purple and pale blue combos followed, as well as simple jersey dresses with a (paste) jewelry motif. The look was high glamour by way of the Sears catalog—and those familiar with Scott's work will understand that this is quite a compliment. For the grand finale Scott staged a ravishing old-school beauty pageant that was part Barbie, My Little Pony and Miss Colombia. His contestants, ravishing in Nagel makeup and curly manes, wore beaded pastel sea-shell bathing suits as Scott read out their measurements over Phil Collins'Against All Oddssoundtrack. Who could ask for anything more?
12 October 2000
The avant-garde met retail-credibility tonight as Jeremy Scott proved once again that he has the ability to turn out chic, salable clothes and still maintain an independent spirit. His show opened with a series of brown pinstriped looks that were, as always, inspired by the '80s, but looked thoroughly modern; logo bags, coats and turtlenecks cheekily referenced fashion's love affair with branding.Scott's vision of evening wear consisted of tuxedo-printed T-shirts and bathing-suit dresses. Perhaps for the first time in history, a ruffled sweatshirt was presented as part of a smoking. For an appropriately dazzling finale, Scott revived early-Hollywood diva looks—serving up negligées, robes, satin gowns and Grecian columns that offered a sexy and humorous take on America's infatuation with iconic starlets.
2 March 2000
Jeremy Scott's presentation was a brilliant finale for the collections--and a witty reply to all his detractors, who had accused him in the past of producing outlandish clothing that no one would wear. Scott encapsulated--and took a step further--the dominating themes of the season: easy luxury, '80s references and working woman sexiness. His show opened with a series of strong-shouldered tan trenches, wrap dresses and blazer suits. "Perfect for power lunches or PTA meetings," said Scott, who acted as emcee. Sharply commenting on the current branding craze, Scott also produced his own series of travel totes, bags and clutches, and emblazoned them all with his name. After a long day at the office, the girls needed to relax on the tennis court, of course, wearing skimpy powder-blue knit-wrap dresses, sports jackets with removable sleeves and campy visors. And for evening wear, Scott proved that aside from biting humor and talent, he's also got plenty of spunk left. His "Atlantis divas" were clad in nearly pornographic pastel chiffon, reminiscent of a Swedish blue-movie starlet circa 1980. Vivel'avant-garde!
8 October 1999