It was déjà vu all over again at Moschino tonight. Kaia Gerber opened the show in a leather biker jacket, hat, and boots not unlike the ones her mother, Cindy Crawford, wore in a famous Peter Lindbergh photo of the supermodel for Vogue in 1991. Twenty-five years goes by like water under the Brooklyn Bridge, but fashion has changed in the interim. Kaia also sported a My Little Pony tee, the latest in a line of boundary-breaking high-low capsule collabs that have made Scott’s Moschino popular on a scale that the house founder Franco could only dream of.
Biker ballerinas were Scott’s story on the runway: leather jackets, satin bustiers, tulle tutus, and fishnets in a couple dozen variations, with some DIY tees thrown into the mix. “Shirt happens,” one read. Indeed it does. This collection lacked the visual wit of some of the Moschino shows Scott has put on in Milan. Last season’s cardboard couture wasn’t just clever, it packed an activist’s punch about widespread waste in and out of the fashion industry and, bigger picture, about climate change. Scott is as politicized as ever, he says, but the way he sees his role nine months into the Trump era is as a bearer of light. “You know in the Depression era, when people went to see a double feature for a nickel and they would be transported from the fact they had no food, no job?” he said backstage. “I have to stay super positive, because I have to give that positivity to people.”
He certainly didn’t fail to put smiles on people’s faces, especially with a surprise finale section of dresses that recast his models not as butch femmes and tough chicks, but as flowers. Anna Cleveland he-loves-me-he-loves-me-notted the pink tulip petals of her bodice up and down the runway and Kaia did her best FTD bouquet.
