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 told The New York Times.
Moschino’s own history was on display in the fall of 1993. Concurrent with X 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 with Vogue. “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 from Jesus Christ Superstar played 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 told Vogue, “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!’”
