What would you get if an anarchistic punk spiked up their hair with lemonade and lacquer, piled onto the subway in the direction of the Upper East Side, and ransacked the apartment of a moneyed rich bitch with a wardrobe to die for? It’s a question that Jeremy Scott seemed to have asked himself when coming up with his latest collection for Moschino, which twisted and skewed house codes and splashed a touch of Salvador Dali-inspired surrealism into the mix.
Coming off as if Fran Drescher in The Nanny and legendary British goth singer Siouxsie Sioux had birthed a lovechild, the designer clashed wild sea urchin-like spiked black hair with rehashed house staples. Neat, boxy little skirt suits came in black, white, tweed and scarlet, buttoned down their placket with gaudy gold buttons, while debutante-style prom dresses were layered over spidery black lace bodies, or otherwise worn under big biker-y leather jackets studded with XXL metal spikes. Elsewhere, glittering crystal slips and barely-there cage bras were offset by puffed-up stoles that looked like bomber jackets turned inside-out and dotted with gaudy jewels.
Backstage, Scott spoke of the passage of time, and how clothes had the power to transcend it. He was right. Though plenty of these looks were dragged straight out of his house’s 40 year-strong archive, through their AW23 punkification they felt fresh and new – helped by the addition of their uber-fun melted hemlines. Inspired by Dali’s famous clocks, it was as if the looks were melting off their wearer’s bodies, this effect enhanced by the crawling “Sunglasses at Night” soundtrack which sounded ominously like the cassette tape had been chewed up in the stereo.
Last season the designer stole the show at MFW when he turned up the volume and sent looks incorporating brilliantly naff pool floats down the runway – flamingoes, swans, lobsters, and rubber rings among them. SS23 was a bolshy and very literal statement on inflation and the economy, he explained back then. This most recent show felt like an indirect and anarchic follow-up. As the rich get richer, and the poor ever more oppressed Scott’s gang of punks are ready to raze it all to the ground – but not before frantically emptying their designer-stuffed wardrobes first.
