Something wickedly clever this way comes.
Moschino’s Jeremy Scott is known for making his own rules, but, in rerouting the expected into the upside down—that is, by offering cinematic, scary movie–inspired clothing for the wrong season—he went further off-script than maybe ever before. Scott’s Los Angeles show was underpinned by a trip-down-memory-lane nostalgia, yet more importantly, it was literally screaming with humor and modernity. It all worked; the payoff was kind of brilliant.
Held at Universal Studios—along the same set that served as Wisteria Lane on Desperate Housewives—Scott sent forth his models as trick-or-treaters in a foggy twilight. There were references to horror-core galore: Redrum printed vertically on a dress (The Shining); neon green leather with trompe l’oeil stitches (Frankenstein); a model shrieking and banging on doors (an homage to Drew Barrymore’s character in Scream, which Scott mentioned was one of the night’s main inspirations). Yet even though there were a lot of silver-screen throwbacks, the takeaway was very Stranger Things (season three airs in three weeks). It felt like suburbia blanketed in sugary faux-creepiness, a polychromatic Edward Scissorhands-ian moment for the Instagram era. “I wanted to take the most mundane, beautiful, manicured, perfect setting because that’s where the darkest things always happen,” said Scott.
He suggested platform boots in pumpkin orange, extra-oversize sweatshirts sewn through with even more oversize ruffles, graphic trope-y tees and spider-web-studded moto jackets. A relatively subtle dress read “Trick or Chic.” At the finale, a “corpse bride” walked out, holes burned into the hem of her wedding gown. “Vera Wang can't have all the business!” Scott joked.
The show was a little tough to see in the shadows, and the styling was as maxed out as it could be. What really resonated—and thrilled—was the popcorn smack of disruptiveness that Scott brought to the block. We live in a time where it’s almost impossible to get noticed, or, somewhat counterintuitively, we don’t know what will get noticed. Moschino is one of those brands where the viewer is mostly aware of what to anticipate, and this is where Scott so smartly surprised. Nobody saw it coming, and it made for absurd theater, as well as candy-for-thought. Why did he do it? “I mean, it’s always Halloween with me,” he said.
