Jeremy Scott is calling from Kansas City, where the sky stretches out like a promise and the pace is soft enough to hear yourself think. “It’s been nice,” he says. “The sky here—it’s just so big. You can see forever.” For a man who has spent most of his life making very loud things—loud clothes, loud statements, loud cultural moments—there’s something sweet about this quiet. Don’t be fooled. Scott hasn’t stopped. Not really.
“I’ve been fixing furniture, decorating, actually being present in my life,” he says. “That’s the thing no one talks about—how rare it is, especially in fashion, to just be.” Since stepping down as creative director of Moschino in 2023, he’s been designing 500 costumes for Blinded by Delight, a cabaret-style revue at Berlin’s Friedrichstadt-Palast, the largest theater in Europe. He’s also reworked skincare packaging for SpoiledChild, organized decades’ worth of archives, and finally given his Palm Springs house the love it’s been waiting for.
The reason he’s in Kansas City is because of yet another project—something big, something colorful, something close to his heart. At the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Scott’s retrospective exhibition, A Match Made in Heaven, is on view. It’s not just a fashion show. It’s a conversation between his work and the wild, high-energy paintings of Katherine Bernhardt, a fellow Missourian born the same year as Scott and just as obsessed with pop culture.
It was Bernhardt who got the ball rolling after curator Joanna Northrup pitched the idea of a joint show. They didn’t have a direct line to Scott, but Katherine knew Rosson Crow, one of Jeremy’s closest friends, and the rest unfolded like a wonderfully weird game of telephone. “Katherine called Rosson. Rosson called me. I called Katherine. And we were off,” Scott laughs. “Very old-school, very analog, very real.”
The show is a heady, joyful explosion of color and culture. Bernhardt’s paintings—huge, gestural, funny—feature Windex bottles, McDonald’s arches, the Pink Panther, Bart Simpson. Scott’s work, of course, responds in kind: golden French fry bags, chandelier dresses, fast food couture, cartoon shoes. “At first, I trusted Joanna’s vision,” he says. “But once I was installing my pieces with her paintings already hung, I started to really see it. The way the colors bounced off each other, the pop references crisscrossing—it felt alive.”
There’s one mannequin at the very start of the exhibition, posed like a conductor, arms raised to lead an orchestra. She’s wearing the infamous pizza dress from Scott’s Fall 2006 Food Fight collection. “That one felt right to open the show,” he explains of the pizza. “Food has been a recurring theme in my work forever. There’s a playfulness, but also something deeply American, almost mythological about it. It says: ‘Welcome to the show.’”
From there, visitors walk through a chronology of chaos, beauty, and delight. One white dress from Scott’s third collection—the one that caught Björk’s eye and sparked a longtime creative friendship—is displayed with the reverence of a relic. In another room, his infamous all-gold collection gleams like a sartorial middle finger. “It was 1999. Minimalism was king. And I came in with gold lamé and mismatched heels inspired by Marilyn Monroe,” he says. “People were shook. But the kids got it. i-D got it. The stylists, the young photographers—they got it. And now? Gold is everywhere. Everyone’s dripping in it.”
Upstairs, sneakers from his iconic Adidas collab—some dating back 20 years—are displayed on glowing acrylic shelves like museum-grade artifacts. “People forget, but I was doing designer collabs with a sportswear brand before anyone else. It didn’t exist before me,” he says. “Now it’s like… standard.”
There’s pride in his voice, but not arrogance. More like wonder. He talks about legacy with a certain Midwestern humility—part awe, part mischief. “I’m proud of how relentless I was. Pedal to the metal, full throttle, always. Even when I look back at things and think, ‘Oh I wouldn’t do that today,’ I still respect it. Because I meant it. I was all in.”
“The show is also a love letter to my parents,” he continues, “to my hometown. It just wouldn’t have meant the same anywhere else. Not Paris, not London, not L.A. Here, my family could come. My high school French teacher showed up. Fans drove from other states. There were people crying, telling me what it meant to see my work here. It’s been overwhelmingly positive.”
There’s a short documentary accompanying the exhibition that adds another layer of intimacy. Bernhardt visits her childhood home. So does Scott. The camera lingers on old furniture, cluttered shelves, faces that made them. “You see where we come from,” he says. “You get the ingredients. And then you understand the recipes.”
When I ask him what his younger self would think of all this—this full-circle moment, this homecoming—he laughs gently. “I think I’d tell him: it’s all worth it. The rejection, the heartbreak, the grind. Just keep going. Stay weird. Hug the people you love and don’t take anything for granted.” There’s a pause, then he adds, “Also, like, holy shit, you actually did it.”
I ask what’s next. Will there be a runway return? A film? A new chapter? He doesn’t say no. “Right now, I’m enjoying the clean slate. This show helped me define everything I’ve done up to this moment. Now, I get to start fresh. And that feels… exciting.”