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 of The Beverly Hillbillies was 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.
