In between the Leviathan-like collections seen at Gucci and Prada during Milan Fashion Week came the puzzling situation at Moschino: leaving behind (at least for the time being) McDonald's uniforms, Barbie clothes, roadworks, Super Mario and other assorted pop shenanigans, Creative Director Jeremy Scott opted for two moods.
The first inspiration must have been a sort of biker-meets-Peter Marino-meets a model dressed in a fancy Haute Couture gown.
Leather bustiers, crop tops, capes, and ragged distressed denims (matched with biker caps) were indeed wrapped in swooshes of taffeta or silk that at times opened to reveal thigh-high boots.
Then Scott reintroduced the occasional skeleton dress (Schiap forgive them because they do not know what they are doing...), reinvented this time (Scott has sent out on his runways skeleton tops and dresses many times such as in his A/W 2011 and S/S 2011 collections, though on Moschino's runway the situation was more kitsch than usual...) with bones traced by chains and handcuffs for that "Halloween in a hardware/bondage shop" frisson.
The second inspiration came from a sort of cigarette/nicotine-like addition to fashion (see the Marlboro packets turned into a pack of "Moschinos"), combined with an event that took place in Florence in 1497, the so-called Bonfire of the Vanities.
During the latter, the followers of Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola collected and publicly burnt objects that went from art and books to clothes, cosmetics, playing cards, and even musical instruments. In a nutshell, a selection of pieces that could lead to sin or were deemed immoral.
So while fashion addiction was hinted at via designs that reinvented cigarette packets and warned that fashion kills (hence the skeletons), the last final gowns were all burnt, eaten by flames and blackened by soot and ash. The very final gown was actually still smouldering as if the wearer had just escaped from a fire.
Symbols of decayed glamour, the pyro gowns aren't actually a new idea: Fendi's Spring/Summer 2011 collection included for example cotton and organza dresses with drawstring waistlines and burnt edges that symbolised the heat of summer or the sun burning, while channelling at the same time Burri's combustions.
In 2012 cigarettes and bonfires were quite fashionable as proved by Pratt fashion graduate Meredith Lyon's and Giles Deacon's AW/2012 collections: the latter in particular featured quite a few gowns that had been maybe donned by witch-like creatures who had escaped an angry mob trying to burn them on a bonfire.
Giles' gowns looked like mille feuille confections that had been burnt with a flame thrower; Scott burnt his gowns and had them vaping along the runway, but the results were more or less the same with one main difference, Fendi and Giles' seemed to be still wearable, while Scott's are made with celebrities in mind (check out chandelier gown that also made an appearance in this collection and that looked as if a chandelier had trapped in a tragic accident a fashion victim - imagine the chandelier falling on the stage of the Phantom of the Opera musical, but hitting a useless fashionista on its way, and you get an idea...View this photo).
Yes, Scott designs for party girls; yes, he's got hundreds of young celebrities who love him, and yes, he's into showmanship and spectacle; but these are not the most puzzling issues about this show.
The most puzzling thing is indeed the fact hat we have seen the same inspiration on relatively recent runways (well, yes four years ago is aeons in fashion terms, but it's still a relatively recent time for human beings), and while this is not a case of literal appropriation or copyright infringement of the sort Scott has recently been involved in, it still makes you think about our collective attention span.
While the see now/sell now movement Scott apparently criticised with this collection (though he supports it as proved by the Moschino capsule collections that usually go on sale postshow) may be shortening the production chain, it is also erasing part of our memory and making us collectively think we are seeing something new in an old garment.
So it's time to ponder a bit about the consequences of accelerating even more the fashion rhythms and calendars by shortening the production times; in the meantime, if you want to embrace the nicotine trend and save some money, there's still Aliexpress, where (as it usually happens with most designs by Scott for Moschino) you will be able to pick several cigarette sweatshirts for a fraction of the price you would pay for a Moschino design.
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