January 2018 Issue #13 Issue #13 Jan 2018 4Guys | Page 12

SPRING 2018 MENSWEAR
Moschino
What a difference four month makes. In Feb-
ruary, when Jeremy Scott sent out a vaguely
Vegas-themed Fall/Winter 2017 collection for
his eponymous brand, the clothes exuded a
kind of desperate hedonism, born out of Scott’s
post-election fury and fear. This evening, as Scott
revealed his latest Moschino collections—like-
wise Vegas-inspired—there was a sense of op-
timism and plainspoken American can-do on the
catwalk. How appropriate that the show coincid-
ed with the day that millions of Americans were
glued to their screens, watching James Comey
testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee:
June 8, 2017, may well be remembered as the
day America got its hopefulness back.
Speaking before the show, Scott explained that he’d premised his collections on the idea of a
road trip from L.A. to Las Vegas—two cities for dreamers, as he pointed out, with a lot of empty
highway in between. Or not so empty, if you’re really looking. Had the exuberant guests at to-
night’s Moschino show in Hollywood made a pilgrimage to the Vegas slots, en route they might
have noticed small-town girls in prairie dresses and denim, striped Navajo blankets being sold
by the side of the road, billboards featuring the Marlboro Man (R.I.P.), and leather-clad bikers
filling up their tanks at rundown gas stations. Scott himself is a noticer, as well as a connois-
seur of Americana, high and low; his re-imagining of the classic Route 66 road trip was wise in
the way it absorbed the personae of rest stops and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it small towns into the
fantasy glam of the Cities of Sin and Angels alike.
Thus his cowboys and bikers were sexed-up and turned out, their suits bedazzled and licked
by hot-rod flames, their muscle-hugging trousers and biker jackets embellished with studs and
snakeskin appliqué. His girls were pin-up manqués, in prairie dresses nakedly sheer, show-
girl bustiers, and denim, genuine or patchwork-printed, hanging low on the hip or cut down to
shorts so abbreviated they’d make Daisy Duke herself think twice before donning a pair. It was
the best kind of Jeremy Scott hodge-podge, with just enough finesse—to wit, in the tailoring
of the leather and suits—to elevate the camp. The collection was also enlivened by a handful
of inspired ideas, notably the pin-up silhouette appliqués featured on numerous looks. Scott is
the rare designer capable of being sexual in a non-prurient way—this collection, baldly sexy as
it was in both its men’s and women’s output, cast sex in the same light as a night at the craps
table.