If the social revolts of the previous century created a new world of subdivisions, 2020 will be remembered for the opposite. Now, nobody wants to be grouped by stereotypes of any kind. Or, as Jeremy Scott put it: “Boxes are for shoes. They’re not for people.” As we draw the curtain on this monumental year, you could approach his Moschino collection—his last of 2020—as the simplified perspective on that philosophy: Take the archetypes of the old world, cut them up, and collage them together.
“I love collage as an art form,” Scott said on a video call from his home in Los Angeles. “It’s how I usually work when I’m doing collections—illustrating them, taking pictures, cutting them apart, putting things together.” On every level, it’s how he’s been working since he relocated to California 20 years ago. Before we all became pandemic-time experts at long-distance collaboration, Scott’s creative process came together as a sort of collage in itself. “They were shipping things to me, I’d make notes, send them back.”
It’s why this collection looked so screen-friendly. Like his audience, Scott often has to look at every piece he designs through a screen before he gets to see it in real life. “Something that maybe in person is not bad, when you see it in a picture, you might see it’s so black you can’t even decipher the details.” By default, he already understands the lesson every designer has learned in 2020: In the digital age, clothes first have to pop off the screen then take corporeal form.
Observing Franco Moschino’s penchant for messing with the stereotypes of the traditional wardrobe, Scott went a step further. He Frankensteined his way through fashion’s favorite archetypes—the lady who lunches, the businesswoman, the biker chick, and so on—dissecting them, collaging them, and bringing them back to life in defiant manifestations. The trench coat, the biker jacket, and the jean jacket—staples loaded with societal connotations—found new ways to unify and harmonize in a surgical symphony Scott called “collisions of archetypes,” all modeled by Winnie Harlow.
“You might have the tweed dress, but she’s got the biker lapels and corset sprouting out of it,” he said, referring to a look Alexis Colby wouldn’t have turned down. “You thought she was a good girl, but she’s actually a little naughty. And I think that’s the truth of it. Everyone is not 100%.” It was a simple idea in a time when clarity is a luxury, delivered with all the teddy-bear motifs and faux-fur cartoon eyes that Scott finds evoke the comfort of nostalgia. “People are multifaceted and complex—that’s always been true, but maybe now it needs to be more visible for people,” he reflected. “I also just thought they were kind of cute clothes.”
