Last week at the amfAR gala, Madonna presented Jeremy Scott with the Award of Courage for his commitment to the fight against HIV/AIDS. “She was so early on the scene of supporting the gay community. In a time when Lil Nas X is topping the charts singing about bottoming, let’s not forget that there was a time when this didn’t exist,” Scott said on a video call from his kitchen in Los Angeles, reflecting on his milestone. “There was a time when the only person who was a safe refuge was Madonna.”
Growing up, Scott was subjected to severe homophobia. “There wasn’t a day that went by that I wasn’t called a derogatory name, hit, punched, or spat on because of the way I looked and the way people perceived me. Which was gay. I couldn’t control wanting to express myself from the way I dressed. It was so integral to who I am.” Flicking through his Moschino pre-fall 2022 men’s collection on a shared screen, he kept repeating the same words: “It’s about my own fantasy about how I dress, how I’ve dressed in the past, and how I imagine myself.”
In many ways, the collection was very now. Between Scott’s cyberspace-y colors and textures and the tactility of his hand-spun weaving and quilting, there was a contrast pertinent to the ambivalent desires of a digital youth. Take for instance the hats with demon horns, which brought a popular social media filter into reality, or the robot bear motif, cuddly and mechanical all at once. And yet it was exactly what Scott said: bold, boisterous clothes founded in the timeless youth-driven impulse to express yourself, especially if you feel different.
Scott imbued the collection with tokens from his own life. His studded leather chokers from the 1990s, certain elements of grunge, a fair amount of techno, and the bling of the 2000s. Through fashion glasses, those things were easily targeted at the TikTok generation, so mysteriously nostalgic for a time they never experienced. From a more universal point of view, they were the elements that continue to make up the thrifty homemade wardrobes of any provincial teenager of a more flamboyant conviction than his peers.
Fantasy Boys read a graphic on a sweatshirt. “So much is going on via screen: fantasy lives, fantasy boys, dressing as you want to dress. That’s why I placed it in outer space and made these space cowboys,” Scott said, referring to the backdrops of his look book. In a time when young generations are dealing with the dichotomies between the digital world and reality—and often trying to manifest one into the other—those fantasies felt like a love letter to individuality. A collection like this may not move mountains in fashion, but any gay teenager dying to express himself will find a refuge here.
