Looking at the designs on Moschino's runway it felt like the 80s had never passed and the late Franco was still with us.
Rossella Jardini decided to continue the trend she started with the Autumn/Winter 2010 collection that mainly consisted in looking at the archives from the early 80s and reinventing them for modern women.
Stetson hats, gold jewellery - including Lily of Florence earrings and necklaces or fake pearls - stripes, polka dots and well-cut suits with typical surrealist details like appliquéd boats in the place of pockets, gold scissors instead of froggings and gold fringes decorating the edges of a jacket, were indeed all there.
Yet this time, black, red and white - the classic Olive Oyl palette, trademark of this fashion house - was turned into a navy/electric blue, red and white palette that evoked (especially in the striped jackets and skirts, but also in the tricolour ribbons of the sandals) the American flag.
There was a sort of Mexican exuberance in the skirts and headbands, but also an undesirable schizoid effect that hurt the retina in the blue/red polka dot suits or in the dresses with blue-red-white abstract prints (in perfect "vomit-inducing British Airways hostess uniform from 1992-2004"-style...) .
The most over-the-top looks (like the American flag-inspired outfits in Viktor & Rolf's "Stars & Stripes" A/W 2000-01 collection) called back to mind William Klein's 1968 satire Mr Freedom - minus rugby outfits, sequinned body-suits, Pierre Cardin-like futuristic capes and helmets and crazy freedom fighters.
Klein told in this comic book-style film the story of a bizarre and myopic American superhero who tries to protect Paris from Communism (represented by a foam rubber Cossack called Moujik Man and the inflatable dragon Red China Man) by destroying it.
Klein's Pop Art aesthetic is what made this film truly memorable. There are indeed some incredibly ironic scenes in this film like the ones portraying the American Embassy like a supermarket with girls clad in stars and stripes dancing around the aisles.
The costumes for this film, designed by Janine Klein, were made by the Pierre D'Alby fashion house, founded in the 50s by textile expert Zyga Pianko in Paris, and led at the time of Klein's movie by a group of young designers.
Among the other designers who worked throughout the years for Pierre D'Alby there are Daniel Hetcher, Agnès B, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Feycal Amor and Nicole Fahri (and this maybe explains the cartoony, Pop aesthetic of some of their creations...).
It was somehow impossible not to detect in the Moschino's red designs a sort of derivation from the tomato red uniform worn in Klein's film by the Red Marie character, while the tailored outfits accessorised with Stetson hats seemed to be a derivation of Mr Freedom's look.
Yet Klein - who laughed at the fashion industry with Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? - used in this case his colourful aesthetic to satirise American politics and the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
There wasn't actually any serious attempt at satire in Moschino's Spring/Summer 2011 collection and, in a way, that's a shame and a betrayal of Franco Moschino's ethos.
The late designer often used flags, but also symbols like the hammer and sickle in ironic ways, while today many fashion designers seem to be so politically correct that they rarely dare to incorporate specific symbols in their collections, while I think it's time to play a bit more with our identities and cause some truly irreverent political chaos.
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