Nobody, but nobody is having more fun than Jeremy Scott at Moschino. Season by season, the ideas get zanier, but the productions just keep getting bigger. And why not, when his clothes and accessories are selling so well? True to silly form, tonight’s theme was car-wash couture. Traffic cones, barricades, and a genuine car wash that sprayed bubbles instead of water were installed on the runway. “No Parking, Couture Zone,” one sign read; another: “Dangerous Couture Ahead.”
Also true to form, this was not a show about subtext. But if it was all out there on the waxed and polished surface, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t smart. Take the full-skirted trench coat with a warning sign on the back—“Open Trench,” it read—or the little black dress with the iconic red octagon on the chest printed “Shop,” not “Stop.” In a he-thinks-of-everything moment, Scott had none other than Lapo Elkann, international playboy and heir to the Fiat automobile fortune, in the front row.
The accessories served up one visual pun after another. None other than Stephen Jones, milliner to fashion royals and royal royals, did the veiled hard hats and traffic cone chapeaux. There were toolbox and lunch-box bags, tail-fin sunglasses, and caution-tape sandals. As for the clothes, they were the tony uptown answer to last season’s below-14th-Street streetwear. Chanel-style skirt suits came in flashy neons with flashier reflective-tape edging; others had Cristóbal Balenciaga–worthy volumes. Scott played fast and loose with Chanel-isms, most literally and perhaps dangerously with a print of interlocking C clamps. A pair of petticoated satin party dresses with taillights lifted off a ’57 Chevy looked like a subtler (if you can call it that) reference to Thierry Mugler’s iconic corset.
An extended evening section that riffed on the rotating brushes of drive-through car washes was capped off by a long column dress with a neon sign slung over one shoulder. Scott’s got fans just crazy enough to take it for a spin IRL.
