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.
