Bouncing down the runway to the ecstatic sounds of the B52s, the wigs at Jeremy Scott’s spring/summer 16 show yesterday looked animatronic. A tonged blond sex kitten do bobbed up and down against Gigi Hadid’s golden shoulders as she opened the show in a candy-colored vinyl halter top and mini skirt. Her lips were painted Palm Beach coral and IRL Barbie girl Paris Hilton smiled approvingly in the front row.
Jeremy Scott is making his cinematic debut tonight in New York, as the star of a Jeremy Scott: The People’s Designer, a new documentary that follows his life from the studio to SoulCycle. But yesterday’s collection broadcast his obsession with the small screen. His focus: television’s ability to transport us to different eras and planets – specifically the 60s and Venus – and its ability to make us all a little cuckoo.
Soon after Gigi came Soo Joo Park, strutting in a silver metallic rain slicker with a purple jacquard spider print and luminous neon green doorknocker earrings. Other standout looks: A flower-print bikini topped with a curtain of plastic disks swinging wildly from a chain harness. Stella Maxwell in a teeny-tiny shift dress covered in crayon scribbles. And everything was worn with neon acetate bangles, giant and glowing like the rings of some technicolor planet.
The late-60s, early-70s references told a story about nostalgia. “I was thinking about the cool girls on the Lower East Side in New York who were going to CBGB and the Mudd Club,” said Jeremy backstage. “It’s a bit sci fi, it’s a bit B movie, it’s B-52s-y – it’s an amalgamation of all those things!” He had also been watching early John Waters movies and Russ Meyers flicks like Supervixens and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.
Didn’t it also look a little Lady Miss Kier? The 90s doing the 60s? “I didn’t really think of that, but yes. It’s a very postmodern world we live in now. There are so many ways to look at other decades and how they looked at other decades. I was playing with that to create something for today.”
Part of making something new was a collaboration with Brazilian jelly-shoe brand Melissa (how had this not happened before?). Cartoonish pink mules many from gummy plastic were finished with little nozzles as if someone had inflated doll’s shoes to human proportions.
Closing out the show came another of Jeremy Scott’s favorite real-life Malibu dolls, Bella Hadid. “The first runway show Gigi ever did was mine. I love her. And this is the first time Bella’s been available. So I thought why not open with my Gigi and close with Bella and make a Hadid sandwich?!”
Read more i-D fashion month coverage here.
Credits
Text Alice Newell-Hanson
Photography Jason Lloyd-Evans