Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
MILAN, Italy — When I visited his LA studio in December last year, Jeremy Scott proclaimed his disdain for the many insufferable events, decisions, and people currently shaping this planet. He appeared angry yet mobilised, a man hell-bent on bringing his drama — the drama of fashion with a capital 'F' — and using it to combat all the unsustainable propaganda that is thrown at us every day.
It’s perhaps why prefacing Moschino’s winter show with Scott’s finale bow makes sense; he sported a white tee exclaiming 'Couture is an attitude, not a price tag’, a controversial yet democratic statement that contextualised his concept for a world where creation need not be elitist, but rather celebrate, recycle and relook at the everyday.
For starters, that meant an opening passage of what Scott named ‘cardboard couture’, a series of fourteen uncomplicated, archetypal silhouettes that riffed on refuse: industrial materials (like his cardboard catwalk) inspiring everything from a dull grey skirt suit mimicking bubble-wrap (trimmed in silver duct tape) to a camel wool car coat or brass-buttoned blazer sectioned off with screen-printed freight instructions and grids of clear bonding like packing tape.
Even the brand’s ubiquitous logo tee returned looking like a crinkled paperbag; it’s inescapably Margiela-esque irony repeated in pieces like sock-shaped frame purses, bath plug earrings or even dry-cleaning plastic covering a black beaded evening dress.
ADVERTISEMENT
Midway, a welcome shock of colour arrived as Scott progressed from his uniform sea of taupe wardrobing; the primary tones of thigh high boots and boxy blouses seemed to read like a Japanese manga print at first glance, but were in fact graphics manipulated from Moschino credits in recent fashion magazines.
And suddenly, as though lifted from their pages, Anna Cleveland appeared in a red velvet lampshade gown trimmed with golden fringe — her train yanked quite literally from the show's stage curtain backdrop. With much pomp and ceremony she stuck it to the man, and in doing so orchestrated the collection's most outlandish 'DIY' fashion moment of all.
