Do you work in the fashion industry and sometimes complain about the fact that its rhythms have become dishuman and impossibly fast? Are you a fashion designer paralised by the anxiety to finish a collection as the deadline slowly approaches and you feel your creations aren't even remotely interesting?
If you answered yes to these questions, well, don't expect to get any encouragement or sympathising pats on your back from Jeremy Scott.
The designer ironically employed as inspirations for Moschino's S/S 19 collection, showcased last week during Milan Fashion Week, themes deeply linked with contemporary fashion, from its relentless pace to the pressure on designers.
Everything started indeed with a joke at the expense of all those designers who complain about having to create one collection after the other and not having enough time to properly finish their work.
Yet Scott's collection wasn't actually incomplete: it featured indeed clothes, accessories and even the new Moschino fragrance, in a big bear-shaped bottle.
All the pieces were inspired by the idea of garments in the making: the concept was represented by white dresses and suits, their vibrantly coloured patterns of squiggles and dots (or lines replicating Chanel's classic tweed designs) quickly scribbled in with a heavy marker or felt pen print.
The clothes were matched with hats and hosiery (in collaboration with Wolford) with the same graphic motif that contributed to give the impression the models on the runway were wearing two-dimensional pieces.
The idea was surreally interpreted in the half-formed dresses that seemed to emerge from a bolt of fabric, in the black gowns with a gigantic pair of silver shears or covered with tinkling rows of needles (this design was matched with a gold thimble headdress) and in a yellow measuring tape turned into a boa donned by a model in a bodysuit replicating the body of a Stockman dummy (far from being a hint at eroticism and S&M, the effect of this design was actually quite disturbing...).
The set evoked memories of Yves Saint Laurent's atelier, but Scott also borrowed from the iconic designer some of his '80s Haute Couture shapes and silhouettes, in particular the suits, sensual wrap dresses and pouf skirts, some of them decorated with large bows and accessorised with boater hats.
Scott stated in interviews with the fashion media that, contrary to other designers, he feels at ease with the fashion rhythms as he's trained to follow them.
Malignant critics may add that he doesn't have a problem since his ideas are not completely original, so he doesn't really spend too much time creating things from scratch.
In the case of Moschino's S/S 19 collection, a day after the show a Norwegian womenswear designer based in London claimed on Instagram that Scott had taken inspiration from her designs.
Edda Gimnes, whose works were featured on different fashion magazines, pointed similarities with her Spring 2016 and Spring 2017 collections that included scribbled dresses, hats and bags characterised by trompe l'oeil details.
To validate the accusation and prove this was not just a case of similarities, Gimnes also claimed she had met with someone from Moschino in New York at the end of 2017 and showed that person her work, including her sketchbooks and ideas.
Looking at the juxtapositions of images on Gimnes' Instagram feed you can easily spot the similarities that also include some patterns and colours (mind you, also Gimnes' designs do reference other creations as well, with a top matched with a pair of trousers hinting at Courreges's iconic 1960s trouser suits with some echoes of the costumes from Jean Dubuffet's Coucou Bazar added in - View this photo).
Those ones out there who still have a good fashion memory may remember also scribbled designs in the S/S 12 collection of Russian designer Vika Gazinskaya; then there was Comme des Garçons' scribbled menswear collection (A/W 15-16; could those scribbled leggings be the inspiration behind Scott's hosiery?), and, last but not least, a while back Burberry also did a coat with the house check turned into a hand-scribbled motif.
Who knows, maybe all these elements and inspirations were collectively behind Moschino's S/S 19 collection, and if that's the case the best thing the offended designers should do (considering that Scott may easily defend himself saying that the main print employed in this collection is a generic scribble rather than a precise motif) is to mock Scott with a project like the "Jeremy Scott Free Inspiration Gallery", launched in 2016 by New York-based artist and photographer Adrian Wilson after the copyright infringement case involving graffiti artist Joseph Tierney, aka Rime, who sued Moschino over the fashion house's A/W 16 collection that featured work from a mural he did.
It would be really sad if Moschino's scribbled and sketched clothes and accessories were really the result of a pilfering exercise (and if it were the case, it wouldn't even be the first time that an established fashion house would be accused of stealing ideas from a young creative mind) as this would prove that Scott doesn't have any problems in finishing his collections because he knows how and where to steal ideas.
As for spotting copyright infringements, well, the Moschino and H&M collaboration is due to hit the shops in November, so get ready for that, there's some exercises in pilfering on the horizon.
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