What a difference four months makes. In February, when Jeremy Scott sent out a vaguely Vegas-themed Fall/Winter 2017 collection for his eponymous brand, the clothes exuded a kind of desperate hedonism, born out of Scott’s post-election fury and fear. This evening, as Scott revealed his latest Moschino collections—likewise Vegas-inspired—there was a sense of optimism and plainspoken American can-do on the catwalk. How appropriate that the show coincided with the day that millions of Americans were glued to their screens, watching James Comey testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee: June 8, 2017, may well be remembered as the day America got its hopefulness back.
Speaking before the show, Scott explained that he’d premised his collections on the idea of a road trip from L.A. to Las Vegas—two cities for dreamers, as he pointed out, with a lot of empty highway in between. Or not so empty, if you’re really looking. Had the exuberant guests at tonight’s Moschino show in Hollywood made a pilgrimage to the Vegas slots, en route they might have noticed small-town girls in prairie dresses and denim, striped Navajo blankets being sold by the side of the road, billboards featuring the Marlboro Man (R.I.P.), and leather-clad bikers filling up their tanks at rundown gas stations. Scott himself is a noticer, as well as a connoisseur of Americana, high and low; his re-imagining of the classic Route 66 road trip was wise in the way it absorbed the personae of rest stops and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it small towns into the fantasy glam of the Cities of Sin and Angels alike.
Thus his cowboys and bikers were sexed-up and turned out, their suits bedazzled and licked by hot-rod flames, their muscle-hugging trousers and biker jackets embellished with studs and snakeskin appliqué. His girls were pin-up manqués, in prairie dresses nakedly sheer, showgirl bustiers, and denim, genuine or patchwork-printed, hanging low on the hip or cut down to shorts so abbreviated they’d make Daisy Duke herself think twice before donning a pair. It was the best kind of Jeremy Scott hodge-podge, with just enough finesse—to wit, in the tailoring of the leather and suits—to elevate the camp. The collection was also enlivened by a handful of inspired ideas, notably the pin-up silhouette appliqués featured on numerous looks. Scott is the rare designer capable of being sexual in a non-prurient way—this collection, baldly sexy as it was in both its men’s and women’s output, cast sex in the same light as a night at the craps table, just another symptom of Americans’ undying belief that eventually, everyone gets lucky . . . and there’s no shame in hoping tonight’s your night. Scott’s embrace of America’s cheese and sleaze, alongside its apple-pie iconography, came off as both patriotic and frank. In whole, it was a rootin’, tootin’ rejoinder to those among us who think the United States isn’t already great.
