How will the pandemic change fashion? Look no further than Marina Moscone’s new resort lineup for a glimpse of the pent-up creativity and exuberance designers are unleashing this year. Like most of her collections, Moscone’s resort lineup opens with her signature curvy tailoring, but where fall 2020’s onyx jacket reads minimal and luxe, the chocolate suit here comes with a surprising flash of acid-y chartreuse silk. Peer closer, and you’ll notice the plissé top comes with a kinky detail: a built-in choker that hooks around the neck.
Things only get bolder from there: A tapestry coat scribbled with mushrooms, flowers, and snakes is trimmed with fluffy green Mongolian lamb; black tunics and flares are inset with giant lightning bolts; sporty knit sets are cinched with XXL metal belts wrapped in upcycled mink; and a bleach-splattered satin dress is finished with cherry silk twisted through a grommeted hem. It’s an idiosyncratic detail you won’t see elsewhere, one Moscone likely came up with through her art-forward, hands-on process. Those bleach spots were the result of trial and error; bleaching the indigo silk turned it orange, for instance, while a peridot version came with hits of saffron.
Moscone’s moodboard was a trip: Photos of David Bowie and Shelley Duvall mingled with oxidized steel works by Carol Bode, Giuseppe Archimboldo’s surrealist paintings of human heads made of fungi and fruit (suffice it to say he was not a painter this writer learned about in Renaissance art classes), and Sarah Lucas’s arresting sculptures of twisting female bodies. Lucas’s eye for color inspired Moscone’s high-contrast palette, while her provocative approach to sexuality and culture fortified the designer’s risk-taking side. If there’s ever going to be a time for mushroom coats and dip-dyed neon, isn’t it now?
Anyone who considered Moscone a “minimalist” designer will certainly do a double-take here. In the release, she went so far as to call resort “an aesthetic reset” marking a new chapter of “impulse and experimentation” for the brand. That isn’t to say she’s abandoned her simpler tastes entirely; taken apart, those suits and plissé separates could be worn anywhere, any way. Later this year, Moscone will also introduce a seasonless capsule of best-selling essentials on her website, including those hourglass blazers, cropped trousers, and poplin button-downs. It should give her even more room to freak it in collections to come, hopefully with a newly emboldened customer to match.
