In yesterday's post we looked at Coach's S/S 22 collection that reissues iconic designs by Bonnie Cashin, reinterpreting them for the future.
The mathematical equation between vintage and new has always been a reliable solution, especially for those fashion houses and brands with solid archives. Yet, recently we have seen more houses reissuing previous designs as they were, without adding anything new, or making very small changes, as if producing something extraordinarily innovative is difficult if not impossible.
The store selection on Moschino's current site features sweaters and jumpers that could be interpreted as Jeremy Scott's take on Bonnie Cashin as they feature kiss lock purse pockets (to be honest, they look more like purses attached to the garment than kiss lock purse pockets...), but, recently, the designer mainly focused on rediscovering the archive of the house he works for.
Moschino's A/W 21-22 collection - entitled "Jungle Red" and inspired by George Cukor's 1939 film "The Women" - features for example dresses, shorts and a skirt suit directly inspired by Franco Moschino's tongue-in-cheek "Survival Jacket".
The latter, as you may remember from a previous post, was originally included in Moschino's Spring/Summer 1991 collection. This khaki twill mock military jacket featured a series of pockets for all the necessary tools to survive in the "fashion trenches". The pockets could indeed fit a mirror, a wallet, credit cards and essential make up including powder compact, lipstick, mascara, nail polish, comb and hairbrush.
The jacket poked fun at the fashion system and at fashionistas from Moschino's unique anti-fashion stance. As the FIDM Museum explains on the blog post dedicated to this piece that is part of its archive, "The Survival Jacket is just humorous enough to diffuse what would otherwise be a sharp critique of the fashion system," pointing out how the late Franco Moschino prompted people to consider the role of fashion consumption within a broader social context.
In that original post published in 2015 we wondered why, in case they were short of ideas, Jeremy Scott and his team at Moschino didn't just open a drawer and copied designs like the "Survival Jacket".
Who knows, maybe they took the cue from that post, but the pieces inspired by the jacket, including a mini-dress that seems to combine Yves Saint Laurent's safari dress as donned by Verushka in Franco Rubartelli's iconic photograph with Moschino's "Survival Jacket", are now available again.
Moschino's A/W 21 collection also features further designs that were slightly updated: a dress with a print of a blue sky, green pastures and Franco Moschino's iconic cows, accessorised with a barn-shaped bag finds a correspondence for example in Gilbert Adrian's (who designed the costumes for "The Women") 1942 whimsical "patio dress" with gamboling lambs on a green field and pale blue skies in the background, and in his Spring/Summer 1947 "Egg and I" dress with a barn on the front and back of the bodice.
It is worth noting, though, that Scott reinterpreted Franco Moschino's "Survival Jacket" for a woman who has...regressed: the original jacket offered pockets for make-up, toothbrush, but also wallet and credit cards, to mock consumerism and fashionistas, but also to hint at powerful women on the go, who didn't even need a bag for their personal belongings.
In Scott's reissued "Survival" pieces, the emphasis is on the make up and hairstyle accessories (sold with the designs), almost to remind the wearer that's essentially all you need in this harsh world. There's not even a credit card holder, but maybe the hope is that your beauty will convince somebody else to pay your bills.
Guess this is a reductive take on the original design, maybe superficial, but not cringing. The cringe is indeed reserved for Moschino's S/S 22 collection: revolving around the nursery theme it features bags shaped like milk bottles and alphabet blocks, bangles and earrings that look like baby teethers, animal quilted mini-skirts and cropped jackets, patchwork dresses, evening gowns from which soft toys awkwardly protrude (imagine fashionining out of a baby sensory mat a Dior gown and you get the idea... the history of fashion features happy and fun experiments with stuffed toys from Moschino to Jean-Charles de Castelbajac but they didn't look this messy), occasionally accessorised with a headpiece made with a crib mobile.
Now, while there's nothing wrong in wearing something that takes us back to our childhood such as a shirt with a cartoon character that may proudly show what we like and reveal we do not take ourselves too seriously (mind you, you can still make it look "grown up" when matched with the right skirt or trousers...), the baby references in this collection perilously verged not towards motherhood, happy nannies or the joy of nursery rhymes nor towards Franco Moschino's surrealism.
There's a danger here of infantilising women in an inappropriate way, something scary in a world in which patriarcal ideals still prevail; we may be living in 2021 but we are indeed still fighting against forced motherhood, abortion bans and feminicides, not to mention wage inequality and discrimination in the workplace.
So, rather than channelling Fran Drescher in the sitcom "TheNanny" (in which Drescher's character donned anyway a fashionable wardrobe that included Moschino, Fendi, Hervé Leger and André Courrèges among the others) as he was trying to do, Scott got lost in a disturbing gender-coded nursery room, infantilizing rather than representing empowered, strong, multi-tasking modern women.
It feels that, while Franco Moschino's goal used to be to make fun of big luxury houses, brands and fashion icons that he deemed part of what he called the "fascist fashion system", here the joke is on women, depicted as immature "baby ladies" in highly improbable and dubious looks.
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