GOLDEN ARCHES, 2014
Golden Arches bag, Moschino, Milan, September 2014.
Vanni Bassetti/Getty Images
A former illustrator for Gianni Versace, Franco Moschino launched his line in 1983, at the height of the fashion industry’s fling with status. He took logos and signature items and subverted them, riffing off Chanel jackets and Burberry raincoats. There was the jacket with the words “Waist of Money” embroidered in gold around its middle; a white button-down, with extra-long arms that wrapped around the body, which had “For Fashion Victims Only” emblazoned on the back. “‘His debunking of the fashion industry was quite remarkable, because it came at exactly the right time,” Lisa Armstrong, then associate editor of British Vogue, told the Sunday Times in 1994. “During the 1980s, fashion designers began taking themselves far too seriously, and he deflated them all.” At the court of fashion, Moschino was the jester—he was on the sidelines, poking fun, but still very much a part of the system.
When Moschino died in 1994 of complications from AIDS, his longtime assistant Rossella Jardini took over and continued with his witty pop-meets-surrealist take for two decades, until she handed over the reins to Jeremy Scott in 2014. Scott’s fashion is similar to Moschino’s in its postmodern borrowing, tongue-in-cheek rebellion, and staging of runway shows that are more about an idea and entertainment than establishing a trend. Like Moschino, Scott has a penchant for using teddy bears in his designs and spoofing Chanel. He also loves a good double entendre.
For his debut collection at Moschino, Scott offered a commentary on consumer culture with a junk food–themed show, complete with Hershey’s Kisses gowns and McDonald’s Happy Meal handbags. There were Chanel-like tweed skirt suits in ketchup red and French-fry-bright mustardy yellow. One model carried a quilted handbag with gold chains that had the McDonald’s arches reimagined as a heart. The collection was Scott’s play on fast fashion: the merging of high and low, couture and street.
The McDonald’s theme resonated with Scott on a personal level, too. In Jeremy Scott (2014) he recalled when the first McDonald’s arrived in his hometown, Lowry City, Missouri, putting it “finally on the map.” As art dealer Jeffrey Deitch observed in the foreword to the book, “The Missouri farm boy has recycled one of the most all-American icons to create a sensation for one of the most iconic European fashion brands—and become an icon all his own along the way.”
“I think of myself as an artist. I’m an artist who uses fashion as a medium.”
—JEREMY SCOTT, Jeremy Scott, 2014
Various Golden Arches bags, Moschino, Vogue Japan, October 2014.
Giampaolo Sgura/Trunk Archive