The third day of New York Fashion Week had Jeremy Scott, once known as the bad boy of fashion, celebrating 20 years of success and bringing together a bevy of supermodels past and present. At the Monse label, Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim brought guests to a real gymnasium, where they celebrated vintage athletic wear, but with their own so-called “unhinged” style.
ANNIVERSARY TIME AT JEREMY SCOTT
Jeremy Scott’s kitschy, high-entertainment fashion shows always have whimsical themes. This time, the designer didn’t have to look far for inspiration: his theme was himself.
It was the 20th anniversary of Scott’s label, and he celebrated it by going back to his own past, looking at key moments of his career and updating the looks for today.
“I used my own history as my starting point,” Scott said in a backstage interview Friday night. “And as fashion is so contextual, there’s so much meaning about when and where it’s done, that it was challenging, because I was, ’How do I take all of this and also make something new for today?”
Scott said he finally figured out that the answer was “like making a fragrance from a flower and taking the essence, and so I started grabbing the essence of different remarkable moments in my career that I am responding to today.”
A quickly visible theme was snakeskin, in bright neon colors — bold pink, brilliant yellow — in trousers, or jackets, or thigh-high boots. And there were sequins galore, reserved not for gowns but for street wear, like glittering hoodies and work boots.
There were cargo pants, but here, they were perfectly sheer. There were big and colorful cartoon graphics, on shirts and sweaters. And there was a series of looks with huge, fake colorful gems, or what Scott called “body jewelry.”
Among the notable models were those who have been important Scott’s past shows, like British model Liberty Ross, 38. Also walking the runway was the daughter of singer Lionel Richie, Sofia Richie.
“She’s so excited she’s about to have a nervous breakdown,” Richie said before the show, “and she’s just, ‘Oh my God Dad, I want you to come!’ Then I’m finally here and she goes ‘Oh I’m so nervous that you’re here.’ What does that mean?”
Also walking in the show were supermodels Gigi Hadid, Karlie Kloss, Coco Rocha, and Joan Smalls.
Scott, who also is the creative director for Moschino, spoke passionately about his recent work on the music video and album artwork for his friend Miley Cyrus’ “Younger Now.”
“Miley is like a rib out of my own chest,” Scott said, adding he would do many more projects with her. “We can’t get enough of each other,” he said. “I love her to pieces.”
He also addressed the role of fashion in the current polarized political climate.
“Particularly with me, I think I have always played a role in being… a place of fantasy, of escape… I always think of my shows as like the movies were for the Depression era, where people would go to the movies to escape the fact that they were hungry and didn’t have a job and didn’t have all the necessities. They brought you fantasies, these movies of glamour and glitz and fairytales. And you know, putting a smile on someone’s face really does make them feel better.”
KICKOFF TIME AT MONSE
The designing duo of Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim seem to have a particularly grueling Fashion Week schedule. On Friday they showed their younger label, Monse, which they launched two years ago, and on Monday they’ll show their work for the storied Oscar de la Renta, where they were named creative directors a year ago.
The venues of the two shows have an entirely different vibe: The de la Renta show will take place at Sotheby’s auction house on the Upper East Side, and the Monse show was in, well, a gym, in a complex on the far west side of Manhattan. Guests walked by weight machines and stationary bicycles to get to the runway.
As for the clothes, they were inspired by vintage football and baseball uniforms, Garcia said backstage.
“We just started looking at every Americanism that we could find, and reimagined it in the unhinged Monse way,” he said. “I think everything we do is slightly unhinged. We pick a subject every season and we just tear it apart.”
Example: The collection included oversized striped, button-down shirts — a classic look, except the shirt back was in front this time, and the buttons and collar were in the back. Other shirts had one bare shoulder hanging out. Some skirts were shredded into narrow strips; there were roomy, colorful sweatshirts with holes at the shoulders. There were ’50s-style collegiate cardigans, but with one exposed shoulder, and a satin team jacket was turned upside down, so that the waistband was at the shoulders, and the collar at the waist.
The idea, Garcia and Kim said, was to give women tired of the staples in their closets a new and different version of them.
The designers also wanted to pay tribute to New York. “I don’t think we would have ever been able to get to where we are in just two years time if it hadn’t been for the support of people in New York,” Garcia said. “It would have happened eventually in other cities, but not as fast as in New York. And so we’re saying thank you.”
Celebrities at the show included Paris and Nicky Hilton, actress Kate Bosworth, and Nicki Minaj — whose late arrival due to traffic issues delayed the show.
