There are two things that profoundly disturb and annoy me: living in the past and hearing somebody rolling in their grave. Both these things happened when seeing Moschino's Spring/Summer 2014 collection.
The show was supposed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Italian fashion house, so it featured iconic models such as Pat Cleveland, Erin O'Connor, and Gisele wearing archival pieces including the "Bull Chic" matador-style outfit with a black bustier and long skirt featuring prints of a cow on a red background, the teddy bear coat and an evening gown made with bin bags.
The archival pieces - some of them seen in June at the Moschino's S/S 2014 menswear and womenswear Resort collections presentation in Shanghai - were followed by the new designs.
Models came out on the runway in pairs, to hint at the "good/bad girl" dichotomy. Further pieces from the archive - among the others a sequinned question-mark mini-dress and the Gazzetta dello Sport (i.e. the Italian sport daily printed on pink paper) trouser suit, a design inspired by Schiaparelli's iconic newspaper print - closed the show.
One of the main problems of the new collection was that the Spring/Summer designs looked tamed and empty compared to the archival designs, while others, rather than mocking fashion classics such as Chanel's jackets as Franco Moschino used to do, seemed to copy them.
The comparison was a bit merciless showing that Franco Moschino's surrealism or his rebellious attitude to a system that reduced fashion fans into victims (remember his "fashion victim" straitjacket?) do not inform the clothes and accessories of the fashion house at the moment.
But the real cue to unlock the show was Gloria Gaynor who turned up to sing "I Am What I Am", a hit loved by Franco Moschino.
Now find a comfy chair, sit down and watch a copy of Carlo Vanzina's Sotto il vestito niente (Nothing Underneath, 1985), a film based on the eponymous Italian novel published in 1983 under a pseudonym.
The story takes place in Milan just before the ready-to-wear catwalk shows for the Spring/Summer 1984 season and starts with the discovery of the body of an American model in a hotel room. While the body mysteriously disappears from the hotel, a fashion magazine editor is kidnapped by a group of terrorists.
At a certain point of the film you will see a catwalk show staged around Milan Central Station and featuring Moschino's Spring/Summer 1984 designs. The show caught in the film opened with the "Bull Chic" outfit and featured models walking down the runway in pairs in good/bad girl style. And, the background music was "I Am What I Am" by Gloria Gaynor.
The fashion house may justify these coincidences saying that they will be celebrating their 30th anniversary come next Spring, so this was a way to have fun and remember, but it looks as if, rather than moving from the past to learn from it and finding a new and more exciting present with an eye hopefully looking at the future, Moschino is firmly resting on its laurels.
We know that conjuring up visions of the past is safer and easier than coming up with new, innovative and clever slogans and designs, but this feels more like revomiting a legacy than carrying it forward.
Who knows, maybe they think Franco Moschino was so good that there is no point in trying to outdo him, but then why not trying to move from other passions that Moschino had in his life, such as cinema and ballet?
Probably the answer to all this is that fashion really hasn't got anything left to say (you wonder what Franco Moschino himself would think about it if he were still alive or what kind of anti-fashion slogans he would have come up with to mock this ruthless system...), though referencing a specific catwalk show included in a 25 year old pseudo-giallo B-movie, is maybe hinting at something else - the crimes of the fashion industry and of the shifty characters and shady relations ruling it. Holy Chic. Holy C(S)hic(t) indeed.
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