Entitled Heavy Metal Dystopia, Number 2—hot on the knee-highs of last season’s dystopia—this was a show that blended badass performative womenswear with good intentions. As previously chronicled, Bebe Moratti is a charitable and conscious soul who thinks the world’s a mess on many levels and who gives a significant proportion of his profits to various good causes. In an unusual move, this show started with a designer statement projected on the backdrop which read: “This show reflects upon a time when the rebellious power of rock ’n’ roll was harnessed to promote social change. A time when rock stars stood firmly alongside activists to fight injustice and rocked the world into a better place. We believe fashion can also be an agent of change.”
And he is absolutely right: In this show alone, Bella Hadid changed, like, three times. Her last look, and the final on the runway, appeared fiendishly tricky to achieve and consisted of a silver sequined minidress grafted into a bias-cut, satin-lapelled black tailcoat. This was also the summation of the key heavy metal reference that ran through this collection: Alice Cooper and his “vaudevillian” (as Moratti rightly put it) way with a tailcoat.
Megadeth’s “Peace Sells” and Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” played as Moratti riffed hard on that starting point via red sequin and crystal and red-on-black animalia-pattern tailcoats. Like last season, there were plenty of short-as-hell, un peu YSL minidresses with dramatically oversize bows or shoulders. More meaningfully Moratti-esque were the leather day-to-night looks that mixed crystal-set leather pants with animalia-patched leather bikers. All of that leather, with the exception of some of the boots, was vegan, and what fur there was, was faux. As Moratti observed: “It’s very rock star—but she’s a responsible rock star.”
