Can fashion be political? Or what does political fashion look like? With his AW20 Moschino show, Jeremy Scott has managed to concoct something extraordinary, playing pure splendour off against revolt and rebellion.
In a politically febrile age where it feels like we’re stalked by evil billionaires buying elections at every turn, and hounded by out of touch elites railing against other out of touch elites, Jeremy looked to the late-1700s, for the collapsing, over-the-top spectacle of the late Baroque world.
The invitation was a giant, pink cake; the opening looks were redolent of cake’s most controversial proponent, Marie Antoinette, and the final looks put the models themselves in cakes, wiggling down the runway in elegantly tiered dresses. In between, in the best of Baroque traditions, was exaggerated extravagance, satire, joy, humour, elegance — sickly over-the-top beauty.
It sucked you in with its fantasy and fun — farthingale and pannier silhouettes reimagined in double denim, as leather motorcycle jackets, trench coats, hoodies. This most ridiculous and formal of garments pulled through Jeremy’s democratising lens, stuffed under giant pompadour wigs.
He’d cut these dresses in half too — making it quite entrancing, quite sexy — like Marie Antoinette adjusting her wardrobe before going clubbing in 2020. The mini skirt, but reworked for Versailles. For all the pointed satire, it was, as a show, pure joy, revelling too into the fantastical silliness of fashion, its hedonism and excess.
Jeremy’s gaze seemed fixated on these ideas this season, finding these pointed similarities in different kinds of excess — how fashion can elevate even the most staid and basic of garments into ridiculous exemplars of cost, luxury and exclusion. Jeremy reworked these staples of modernity into visions of older luxury, older exclusion. He seemed to suggest there’s beauty to be found here, but we should keep our feet on the mirrored catwalk his models walked across, that we can maybe have our cake and eat it. Enjoy the spectacle, but remember the real world outside is burning too.
Credits
Photography Mitchell Sams