Opening with deconstructed biker jackets - transformed into dresses and skirts - duchess satin sashes, caps and chains - the initial vibe was Peter Marino meets Joan Collins. The eighties were combined with a slight Night Porter subversion. There weren’t overt S&M references here, but leather corsets and thigh high boots were heading that way. Harley Davidson belts, fun over-sized denim shirt dresses and organised patches of shredded denim added a naive, playful quality.
There was an interesting take on the infamous Schiaparelli skeleton dress, with a human bone structure traced out in chains. The smoking lip prints also belonged to her, and were emblazoned in repeat over tops and dresses. This then naturally extended (only in the world of Jeremy Scott) to cigarette earrings. An air of Hollywood style called to mind an era when smoking was naively deemed glamourous – and pretty harmless. Britney Spears’ 'Toxic' played over the speakers. Then the Fashion Kills bag - the latest reincarnation of a Franco Moschino anti-fashion for fashion’s sake message – showed up. Franco Moschino believed in the postmodern position – whilst Jeremy Scott turns it into canned irony.
Vogue Italia was pretty much the last major fashion magazine to have women fashionably smoking within its pages. Previously, stuck in the past – the Italian fashion scene is currently rising like a phoenix from the ashes, (and those won’t be the ashes at Moschino). Scott’s mock cynical approach appears questionably dated – and unoriginal. So many other designers are revitalising Milan with genuine joie-de-vivre. This place is really trying to move forward – whilst Scott wants to hold it back, and bathe in smoke filled rooms of outdated clichés.
By the time a chandelier dress arrived, which was based on a once beautiful chandelier dress that Erte created one hundred years ago - now fresh Instagram fodder - I was done. One might think that Moschino is currently fresh, relevant and daring. Mostly, it is the past being literally recycled - to create theatre - with not much more than social media to culturally anchor it to the now.
