This was sooo ’80s. Just not the ’80s you’d expect. Jeremy Scott, left arm in a pink sling following a slip en route to the gym, was thinking about the French Revolution and Marie Antoinette. He laid it out thus: “Well on the geopolitical spectrum, thinking about the 1780s and what’s going on today globally: Are the Hong Kong protests against an oppressive government? In Chile they’re protesting against a rise in subway fares; obviously my home country’s gotta lotta shit goin’ on, and y’all Brex-exiting…there’s a lot happening.” “And thinking about that,” he added, “the turmoil is very similar in a way to…” To “Let them eat…?” he was asked. “Moschino!” he answered.
Now it must be acknowledged that for a luxury fashion house to ape the outrageous aesthetic of elite entitlement that came before the most influential democratic uprising in history, then frame it as political comment, could be seen as a case of having your cake and eating it too. Scott, however, both negotiated this double standard and got to zhoosh up those staid old shapes by clashing his Marie Antoinette pannier dresses with the most emblematic womenswear garment of the radical 1960s, the miniskirt. Scott’s mini pannier starred under maxi hair in various iterations: gold brocade on denim, white biker, black biker, and toile de Jouy. This archetypally 18th-century pattern was used across the collection with the original faces of its cavorting courtiers transformed into wide-eyed anime characters that made you think of the excess of Harajuku dress.
Scott extended his whistle-stop romp through bygone iconography with bikers, skirts, frock coats, and dresses made of richly colored patches of velvet furniture fabric, and apparently tapestried princess scenes featuring more anime ingenues. The cake-based finale that was served in several gut-busting courses was hilarious and provided total visual satiety.
So despite all that fighting talk at the top, how can a fashion show change the world? “All I can do is offer respite,” said Scott. “Even if you continue to fight, you need that moment of joy. We all need something uplifting. My role on this earth has only ever been to spread joy and bring happiness.” Proof of this was how in her dress of icing roses Gigi Hadid had perhaps never looked so elated on the runway, twirling giddily to whoops from the crowd. They say a moment on the lips equals a lifetime on the hips—and the hips on show here were as wide as the runway itself. Yet everyone in the Moschino salon tonight roared and whooped from the pleasure of gorging on serving after serving of Scott’s inventive confections.
